Aftermath Read online

  Another concern was the added weight. The gun and extra bullets were only a few pounds, so it must’ve been psychological. I knew I was carrying a deadly weapon. Still, the purse now felt like a bowling ball in a sling when I hefted it onto my shoulder.

  Armed with so-called peace of mind, I decided to head to Cindy Dwyer’s. On the way downstairs, I flipped through the key ring to select my ride, noting three options: Mercedes, BMW, and Jaguar. I had to admit again that inheriting Dad’s estate didn’t totally suck.

  I retrieved my two large bags and rolled them past the front entrance on my way to the back door and detached garage. Chimes sounded. Three descending notes. Gulping, I dropped the luggage handles and clawed at my purse. Then I stopped and told myself to calm down. Would a killer really ring the freaking doorbell? It could’ve been Cade, Tim, another friendly face, or someone with a surprise Christmas delivery. Still, I dragged out the pistol and put it in my coat pocket. What to do: switch off the safety now and jack-in a round or ask the maniac to wait while I did it literally under the gun?

  The chimes sounded again, the sinking tones matching my falling confidence. Right hand gripping the pocketed pistol, I peered through the peephole my father had installed in the heavy front door and saw a young woman of twenty or so. She’d streaked the ends of her blond hair with a raspberry dye and painted her bangs turquoise to match her fingernails. I decided to keep the safety on.

  Looming behind her head was a puffy, green bedroll. Straps from a backpack creased the insubstantial jacket covering her shoulders. She rotated in place, looking left and right, as if expecting me to come from either side of the wraparound porch. Her movements swayed the camping gear that dangled down past her denim-clad knees.

  I unlocked the door and eased it open so I didn’t startle her. “Hi there. Are you lost?”

  My visitor stood maybe five-foot-four, discounting a couple of inches for her hiking boots, and was slender and pretty except for the funky hair colors. She laughed. “Yeah, no. Actually I was hoping to see you.”

  “Oh?”

  “So, I totally get that this is, like, out of the blue, but, you know.” Her pitch rose at the end of every statement, as if she were always asking a question.

  I waited for more, noticing her petite nose ring and an eyebrow stud. Her clothes probably hid a canvas of tattoos.

  She added, “Um, we have this, like, really major thing in common, and I think it’s time we clear the air or whatever.”

  “Whatever?”

  “So, what I mean is, you sort of have blood on your hands, and it’s totally cool if you don’t get it, but it’s, like, crazy, and I thought we should, you know, bury the hatchet.” She frowned at my lack of response and said in a loud, slow voice, “Talk or whatever?”

  As I continued to work through her verbal cul-de-sacs, she said, “You know, it’s really rude to leave a person standing on the porch like this. I’m just saying.”

  Part of me wanted to shoot her, for her own sake, but I muttered, “Thanks for pointing that out.” I backed up and stood clear so she could enter.

  “No problem.” In the foyer, she dropped the REI shopping spree from her shoulders. It sounded like a body smacking the floor.

  I closed the door and put out my hand. “I’m Janet Wright.”

  She pumped it enthusiastically, apparently not minding the blood she claimed it was soaked in. “Tara Glenmont,” she said. “Everybody calls me Tar.”

  Unfortunate nickname. I would’ve expected a “Tara” to be really Southern, but she didn’t have a regional accent. Instead, she sounded like the Millennials I’d worked with in Manhattan. However, those young people had bathed every day, whereas this girl reeked of dried sweat and the other body odors that came from camping in the wilderness for a long time.

  She released my hand and looked me over. “So, are you, like, the trophy wife?”

  “I’m not married.”

  “The girlfriend then, or whatever? Someone he met up North? You don’t sound like you’re from around here.”

  “New York,” I confirmed. “But who are you talking about?”

  “Well, duh—you.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Okay, but who else?”

  “Him.” She gestured at the room around us. When I didn’t respond, Tara frowned, lifted some raspberry-dyed hair off her shoulder, and held it in front of her eyes, as if to confirm she was still herself and the world hadn’t gone nuts. She said, “So, maybe you’re like a squatter here?”

  I put on my icy expression, usually reserved for guys who hassled me on the subway. “Okay, that’s enough. You need to leave, Tar. Right now.”

  She crossed her arms. “No need to go all super-witch on me. I’m just saying.”

  “Well, I’m just saying you need to get out of my house.”

  “So, I’m only trying to get, like, some answers or whatever.”

  “You’re done asking questions.” I yanked the door open.

  She walked toward the fireplace in the great room and dropped onto the leather sofa. Bits of dried mud marked her trail.

  Amazed by her chutzpah, I grabbed her backpack by the straps, intending to heave it onto the porch, but I could barely lift it off the floor. Hard to believe she’d been lugging it around without apparent discomfort—the girl was much stronger than she looked.

  She glowered at me through turquoise bangs. “I can’t believe you’re treating me so crappy, after what I’ve been through.”

  “Look, I don’t know who you are or what you’ve been through. And I don’t care.” I wondered if I could shoot her and claim justifiable homicide because she wouldn’t leave.

  “You should care, since you’re living in the House of Death, or whatever.”

  I stomped toward her. “What do you know about this place? First it was blood on my hands and now it’s the goddamn House of Death.” I stood over her, hands tucked into my coat pockets. My right hand gripped the pistol, just in case. “Come on, spill it.”

  “Or what? You’ll, like, make my head explode with your evil glare?”

  “No, I won’t give you the answers you want. Besides, I don’t think you’ll miss your head, since you obviously don’t use it.”

  “Super-witch.” She folded her arms and stared straight ahead, which happened to be level with my midsection. After a moment, she blinked and looked up at me. “Is that, like, a gun in your pocket?”

  I glanced down at my coat—sure enough, I was pressing the barrel hard enough against the fabric to create a noticeable outline. “Yes,” I said, “and you’re tempting me to use it.”

  She snorted. “That’d be just my luck—shot to death in the same house as Wally.”

  I staggered back two steps and had to pull my hands out of the coat pockets for balance. Good thing a chair was behind me. My knees folded, and I dropped onto the leather cushion. “You knew Wallace Landry?”

  “Well, yeah. He was only, like, my boyfriend or whatever.” Her defensive posture vanished, and she leaned forward as if sharing a secret. “So, we were kind of engaged, but he couldn’t afford a ring. He was trying to earn enough money to buy one.”

  And just like that, I knew the missing motive, “the why” Cade had said I wouldn’t find in the case file: a poor boy who wanted to start a life with his wife-to-be and targeted my father’s fortune. The reports would tell me whether Landry’s pockets had contained a lot of stolen cash, but I bet my father hadn’t cooperated when threatened, so “Wally” murdered him. Despite the alarm going off, Landry probably figured he would have plenty of time to search the house and escape, long before the police arrived.

  Tara’s face had taken on a reverential glow as soon as she started talking about Landry. Wanting to slap away that expression, I snarled, “Your fiancé shot my father so he could rob this place and buy you a goddamn ring.”

  “He was your
father? So, he really is, like, dead?”

  “He’s not ‘like dead’—he is totally, thoroughly dead. Thanks to your Wally.”

  Tara popped off the couch, shouting, “Wally’s dead thanks to your dad.” Her left hand disappeared into the pocket of her jacket and emerged less than a second later with a gun even smaller than mine. It was a revolver, with a cylinder of bullets pointed at my face.

  No way could I have drawn my pistol that fast. However, my self-defense classes from the Y flooded back even as I wondered what to do. I slid down on the chair seat, moving below her aim, and kicked upward with my right boot. The toe punted the gun from her hand. As my foot descended, I chopped it sideways, scything Tara’s legs from under her. She fell full-length, gasping as she hit the slate floor, and rolled onto her back.

  Off-balance myself, I allowed my body to continue to slide out of the chair. I ended up with my knees planted on her chest, making her exhale in a whoosh of stale breath. If we were in a movie, I would’ve caught her revolver in mid-air, but it struck the fireplace mantel about six feet above us, bounced once, and stayed there, out of sight.

  My martial arts instructor had been wrong—it turned out I was more than a match for a punk with a gun and a steady hand. This punk anyway.

  While Tara squirmed under me, I took out my own gun and jabbed it toward her face, yelling, “What the fuck are you doing?” Belatedly, I remembered to thumb-off the safety and cock it.

  She looked much more like a pitiful kid barely out of her teens than a cold-eyed killer. “Jesus,” she groaned, then looked past the barrel and met my eyes. “Oops, sorry. That’s a dollar for the swear jar.”

  I had to laugh. “You feel bad about that but not for pointing a gun at me?”

  “I guess I’m feeling bad about everything.” She sipped air, eyes wide. “Look, you’re not, like, fat or whatever, but can you get off? Please? I can’t even breathe.”

  I eased into a crouch above Tara, mindful of her fast reflexes, and then sat down in the chair again. The adrenaline boost began to subside, leaving me weak and shaky. My pistol quivered even when I used both hands to aim it. Being this close to her, I couldn’t avoid smelling the intense body odor. Hopefully there would be a shower and washing machine in her near future. Unless I shot her first.

  She took some deep breaths while rubbing the fingers I’d kicked. After a moment, she rolled onto hands and knees and hauled herself onto the couch opposite me. Amazement had replaced anger on her face. “So, your daddy trained you to be, like, a ninja?”

  “I didn’t really know him. The 47th Street YMCA in Manhattan taught me self-defense.”

  “Awesome.” She looked like she meant it.

  “Are you going to be good, or do I have to shoot you?”

  “Yeah, no, I’m super-cool. Sorry for going all psycho on you.”

  I lowered the gun but continued to grip it. “What the hell was that all about?”

  “I sort of lost it. I’ve been thinking that Wally was murdered but Brady Sta—your daddy—like, faked his own death to get away with it. Then you showed up, and I thought maybe you were in on it.”

  “What would be the point?”

  “One of those thrill-killings? Or maybe Wally stumbled on some dark secret and had to be dealt with? Or maybe he had a dark secret I didn’t know about and was killed for it. Or—”

  “Wait. Stop. You’re making me want to shoot you again.” Reining in my anger, I paused and then tried again in a calmer tone. “Wally murdered my dad, and then the police had to kill him. Those are the facts. Your theories all hinge on my father being alive, but he’s not.”

  “How do you know?” She narrowed her eyes under those turquoise bangs. “Did you, like, see his body?”

  I hadn’t, of course, but I wasn’t about to let that tiny detail get her going again. Better to keep punching holes in her ideas and start getting answers from her. First though, I thumbed on the safety for the pistol and pocketed it so I wouldn’t give in to temptation. Scary how merely having a gun at hand made using it seem—if only for a moment—the most reasonable course of action. Maybe I needed Cade’s firearm lectures after all.

  “Look,” I said, “I need your help to understand Wally. What he did changed my life forever, too.”

  “You’re being, like, totally sincere that you’re not in on his death?”

  “There’s no conspiracy. No cover-up. No deep, dark secret people are hiding from you.”

  “Yeah, no, I guess the theory was sort of crazy.” Her voice thickened. “Kind of out there.” She looked around the room, everywhere but at me, as she pressed her hands together and squeezed them between her knees. Her face reddened, and she began to rock in place. I knew the signs of a dam about to burst—after Andy kicked me out, I had done it a lot.

  As her first tears began to trickle down, I hurried to my purse atop the luggage and fished out a package of tissues. I put the packet in her lap as she continued to rock and cry. By the time I came back from the kitchen with a glass of water for her, the rivulets had become a stream.

  I faced her again from my chair. When she’d finished wiping her face, I said, “I know it’s hard to stick to the facts when your heart’s involved. When you know, deep down, the guy you love has done something wrong.” She didn’t seem to hear me. My language was too analytical—no way would I reach her.

  Trying again, I said, “It totally sucks, okay? But we need to man up and get on with life or whatever.” I raised my fist in a power salute, gave her what I hoped looked like a brave smile, and said, “YOLO, right?”

  With that quick left hand of hers, she threw the tissue packet and hit me dead-center in the chest. “Could you be any more, like, patronizing?” she sneered.

  Cheeks burning with embarrassment, I said, “You’re right—I’m sorry. Let’s start over. Tell me about Wally.”

  Tara blew her nose. After stuffing the used tissues in a jacket pocket, she cleared her throat and peered at me shyly through her dyed bangs. “So, he wasn’t my first boyfriend or whatever,” she said, “but he always felt more real than the others, you know? Sort of like he was The One, the dude I’d been waiting for. How old are you?”

  I frowned at the sudden shift in focus. “Uh, I turned forty this year.”

  She nodded, as if I’d confirmed a suspicion. Did I really look forty? Maybe I needed some of that neon hair color.

  “So, like, you’ve been with some boys?” When I didn’t respond immediately, she added, “Or girls or whatever. It’s all cool.”

  “Boys. A few,” I deadpanned.

  She checked out my ring-less left hand. “I don’t want to go all woman-of-the-world on you, but have you ever been, like, engaged at least?”

  “Once. Didn’t work out. Your point?”

  “Well, you thought he was The One, right?”

  I finally saw where this was going, and I was relieved to shift the conversation back to her and Landry. “Of course. Same as Wally was The One for you.”

  “Totally. He was awesome.”

  “And he was trying to earn enough money to buy you a ring,” I prompted, “and start a life together.”

  “Yeah, so, after he lost his job, which was this total miscarriage of justice, he told me he was hitting the road to find work. He texted me all the time to say what town he was in and, you know, if he was having any luck. Then he said he couldn’t afford his cell phone anymore—they were, like, cutting him off from the world for not paying his bills—but he’d write postcards. I didn’t even know they still made those.”

  Her fingers busied themselves with the zipper on her jacket, moving it down and up, revealing and then hiding a wrinkled, stained tee shirt over and over. “So, like, months go by and I don’t hear from him. I wondered if he’d found another girl or maybe got into some kind of trouble, because he did have this, you know, sort of a temper or whateve
r. He always kept a lid on it, except for sometimes. So, out of desperation, I Googled his name, and up pops these stories about Wally shooting your daddy and getting shot by the cops.”

  “What’d you do?”

  “So, I kind of lost my mind for a while. Couldn’t focus at my jobs. I just kept zoning out and getting fired. Finally, I decided I needed to come up here and sort of unravel the mystery.”

  “But that’s what I keep trying to explain,” I said. “There’s really nothing to unravel here. Wally needed money, my dad was loaded, and it was a robbery that went wrong.” Tara started to protest, but I overrode her: “Or maybe it was an argument that got out of hand. Things happen.”

  Wanting to distract her, I decided to share my real concern. “I am stuck in the middle of a different mystery, though. Did you notice the flat tires on the car parked out front, and the jockey statue some guy tried to uproot? He also carved a threat on the trunk lid.”

  Tara dismissed me with a wave. “It’s, like, a totally bogus mystery. I did all that."

  CHAPTER 14

  Good thing I’d put away the gun.

  Back when I’d stood on the balcony with Mr. Pearson, I must’ve mistaken Tara’s hair dye for a red and blue bandana and assumed a man was watching me from the woods. The damage and threats had been so easy to pin on some mythical, sinister guy. Cade had been right about the danger of making assumptions.

  Gaping now at this girl who had provoked so much fear and anger, I snapped, “Why did you want to scare the shit out of me and vandalize my fucking property?”

  She shook her head, lips turned down in disappointment. “So, do you know you have this total potty mouth? I’m just saying. Granny Hazel would’ve collected, like, ten dollars in her swear jar from you already.” Her face brightened again. “Oh, I haven’t told you about Granny. She’s totally awesome, but she didn’t care too much for Wally. He accidentally dented her Pontiac one time by sitting on the hood. It’s a red Grand Am, but she doesn’t want anybody thinking she’s cussing—like, saying ‘Gran Damn’—so she always calls it her ‘Grand A.M.’ Isn’t that the best?”