Aftermath Read online

  Tara was no longer visible as I lowered into a basement. Fluorescent lights in the drop ceiling flickered on as I passed them. Over an electric whine and the metal-sliding-on-metal noise of whatever mechanism allowed this platform to go down—and hopefully back up—I heard her say, “So, I noticed a hairline crack between the blocks of stone when I was crawling around. Then I found this, like, switch, up here. I guess your daddy was a tall dude, to be able to reach it easy.”

  The platform beneath me stopped with a bump. Ten feet above, Tara peered down through the large square hole. She held her father’s revolver but fortunately wasn’t aiming at me. Yet, anyway.

  “Okay, that was fun,” I called up to her. “Please push the switch again so I can go back up.” Getting claustrophobic under the chair, I squirmed out with zero grace and tumbled off the platform, landing on my hands and knees atop thickly padded carpet. At least my dad had created a well-appointed man-cave. I climbed to my feet and staggered away from the contraption.

  “Yeah, no. I tried that, but it’s not working now. Maybe it’s made that way to keep someone from getting trapped down there—you probably have to find a button at your end.”

  I looked at the wood columns set around the platform, searching for an obvious switch, but got distracted by a row of architectural images along one paneled wall. Clearly they had been shot by the same skilled photographer who’d done the ones in the great room. I turned, expecting to see more pictures, but the remaining three walls were bare. Well, not exactly.

  When I walked closer, I could make out a row of evenly spaced putty marks that dappled the paneling, slightly lighter than the wood but apparently meant to conceal nail holes on those three walls. Maybe for picture hangers. Dozens of them.

  With another click, the flagstone square and chair rose toward the ceiling. Damn that girl, she’d tricked me. It turned out I wasn’t a match for this punk after all.

  I ran back and grabbed the edge of the stone as it ascended above my head. However, I had several problems: I wasn’t strong enough to pull myself onto it, and, if I just hung on, the seam into which the stone would fit up above would squash or cut off anything overhanging the lip. Such as my fingers. Then the basement lights went out.

  CHAPTER 16

  I let go and fell about six feet, landing hard on my heels and then toppling backward onto my butt. The square of bleak daylight from the great room above vanished as the stone rose and filled in the gap.

  Complete darkness. Disoriented and panicked, it took me a few minutes of patting the carpet around me to find my cell phone, which had popped out of my back pocket. In the soft blue glow of the screen, I swiped through the icons until I found the flashlight.

  Previously useful in reading menus at romantically dim restaurants and finding my apartment door lock when the super failed to replace burned-out hallway bulbs, the app hopefully would allow me to discover a way out. My phone showed no signal, so I couldn’t call Cade even if I wanted to. Not that I did. No way would I let someone half my age get the better of me.

  Still, when things started to go wrong earlier, maybe I should’ve shouted for Deputy B.J. Tindale or run outside to him. Monday morning quarterbacking was so not helpful.

  The flashlight provided a dazzling cone of brightness. I searched around the columns that surrounded the platform mechanism, which rose above me in a series of diamond-shaped metal joints that would fold upon themselves and flatten when the square of flagstone came down again. Much cooler than David’s secret pocket door, for what that was worth.

  I couldn’t hear anything overhead, but I figured Tara had made her escape by now. Then I remembered my purse was up there, with my keys in it, ripe for the picking. She could only steal one car at a time—and clearly she’d fallen for the Jag—but with Christmas only two days away, it would take forever to get someone out to change the house locks. Plus the locks at all of my dad’s properties. And only God and Google knew where the nearest German car dealerships were, so I could get the remaining cars towed and rekeyed.

  Cussing, I resumed my search and finally found a switch mounted on one column. I half-expected Tara to have disabled the mechanism at her end. However, the platform descended with the electrical whine and scissoring scrape of metal that I’d heard earlier. The massive leather chair remained atop it.

  When the overhead fluorescent lights automatically came on again, I returned the phone to my back pocket. I hopped onto the stone square before it had completed its descent, sat in the chair because it took up most of the space, and used the toe of my boot to flick the switch again. Heading back up, I realized my gun was in my coat. Near the front door. Maybe with Tara still there. It was possible I was rising into a trap unarmed.

  I considered crawling under the chair again so her first shots would miss me, but then what? Wiggle my way to safety? No, better to dive one way or the other if she turned out to be as murderous as her fiancé. Still, I tried to make myself a smaller target on the chair by hunching over and cringing as I emerged through the floor and back into the great room.

  Again before the platform stopped, I was in motion, this time rolling across the floor in the direction of the fireplace. I thought I could grab a poker or something, but my focus on that plan vanished as I bounced across flagstone slabs, accumulating deep bruises.

  I peeked over the back of the couch. No sign of Tara. Also, I noticed the lack of three things: my purse, my coat, and the camping gear. Other than my suitcases, the girl had cleaned me out as she was clearing out.

  Rubbing my sore knees, I winced and hobbled to the front door. Only twenty years before, I would regularly slide face-first across home plate and hop up to high-five my softball teammates without noticing my sprained fingers and abraded arms. God, I hated forty.

  I stepped onto the porch just in time to see Deputy Tindale remove his Smokey hat and lean into his car. “Wait,” I shouted.

  B.J. popped out so fast, he bumped his bare head on the door sill. It looked like he wanted to spit on the courtyard again. Instead, he lifted his gunk-filled Styrofoam cup and treated me to another display of chewing tobacco extrusion. After sucking wet brown strands from his lower lip, he said, “I ain’t going nowhere, Ms. Wright. Gotta get your prints.”

  He left his hat inside the patrol car and picked up the kit at his feet. “Missed getting them from the little lady with the painted hair, but she said she had to run a errand right quick and would come on back.”

  “Did you have that conversation while she was driving a green Jaguar?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Right pretty thing with a lot of power. Threw stones every which way when she got it revved up good.” He indicated huge gouges in the pea gravel.

  I said, “I’m glad you got a good look, because I need you to put out an APB or whatever you call it—Tara Glenmont stole that car, my purse, and my coat, which has a pistol in one pocket.”

  “Is that right? She sure don’t seem the type. Well, ’cept for the hair and face studs anyway.”

  “Tell me about it—if I knew she was a psycho I would’ve turned her over to you when we pulled up.” I led him inside the house.

  The deputy set the fingerprint kit and spit cup at his feet, tucked his gloves into his coat pockets, and took a notebook identical to Cade’s from his pants. “No call for putting a ‘psycho’ label on her, ma’am. Chief don’t like it when we label folks. Even the dirt bags.” He clicked a pen. “You know the tag for that car? Never seen anyone but your daddy driving such a thing around town, so we can spot her easy, but chances are she’s on the highway by now.”

  My shoulders slumped. “I guess the license plate number is on the vehicle registration card Mr. Pearson gave me. Which I’d put in my wallet, in my purse, which she stole.”

  “I can make a call to Driver Services, see what they got on record. I reckon it’s still in your daddy’s name?”

  “Yes, until I
get a local driver’s license.” Item number twenty-seven on my ever-growing to-do list. Tearing each painted hair out of Tara’s head had become priority number one.

  “I’ll alert the chief and then track down that-there tag.”

  As the deputy withdrew his cell phone and lifted his spit cup, I remembered the legal pad on the dining room table. I said, “Maybe I wrote down the car info—be back in a minute.” The bruises in my knees still ached as I jogged past the fireplace and into the dining room. Served me right for pretending to be an action hero.

  The legal pad was gone—with security codes for the house and garage, all of my notes about the businesses, financial details about the estate, everything Mr. Pearson had told me. It shouldn’t have surprised me. How else could she have gotten the Jag out of the garage? I would’ve been able to recreate most of the details from the mound of paperwork he’d given me, but I’d left the stack on the table, and Tara had snatched that up, too. On a hunch, I went into the kitchen and checked the fridge. Yes, the little bitch had even swiped the lunch leftovers.

  She’d taken her revenge for Landry’s death, with me as the stand-in for everyone she held responsible. I had an image of her striding to the garage with both arms full and camping gear slung over her back. It might’ve been the only thing that had kept her from stealing my luggage.

  Tim was off filing duplicates of my paperwork with the county courthouse, so I still could retrieve it but not without a lot of hassle—seeing as how Tara had all of my identification. I did remember the security and garage codes, but I had no idea how to change them and no user manuals. And with Tara having the keys to the house, I couldn’t stay here anyway.

  Suddenly I didn’t care how much she was hurting inside; my empathy reserves had run dry. All of this havoc, created so quickly by just one obnoxious, tie-dyed brat. I kicked a cabinet over and over, so hard the pots rattled inside it, and shrieked enough curses to overflow Tara’s grandmother’s goddamn swear jar and bring Deputy Tindale running, spit cup in one hand and pistol in the other.

  From the kitchen entrance, he looked me over and re-holstered. “You okay, ma’am? I thought she’d come back and was giving you what for.”

  I gulped air to stop panting and tried to recover whatever shreds of dignity I could by standing taller and straightening my black pantsuit. He kept staring at me as if I were crazy, so I fluffed my hair and tried patting down Mom’s cowlick as well. Finally, I said, “No luck on the tag number. You?”

  “Uh, I just got off my call with the chief.” He watched me a moment longer, made another contribution to his Styrofoam, and added, “He says hey.”

  “That all?”

  “No, ma’am, he started out the door as I made my report and is driving through town, in case the girl stuck around. Said he’d call J.D. in early—he’s third shift—and get him on patrol, too. Counting me, you got the whole of the Graylee police force working this-here case.”

  Cade, B.J., and J.D. Hot damn, Tara was toast. There was no point in acting snarky, so I said, “I really appreciate that. Thank you.”

  He tipped his cap with his free hand and asked, “Okay if I call Driver Services now?”

  “Sure. Do you need info about my father?”

  “Naw, I helped the chief with all that paperwork back in July. Know your daddy’s particulars better’n my own.”

  “That’s good, because Tara also took that from me when she stole all the stuff from my dining room table.”

  B.J. shook his head. “Snatched that, too? Mm-mm-mm, we got us a regular Bonnie Parker on our hands.” Misinterpreting my expression as confusion rather than aggravation, he supplied, “She ran with Clyde Barrow, ma’am. Back in the thirties. Gangsters, they was.”

  “I got the reference.”

  He spat, sucked his brown-speckled lip, and said, “I’ll just make that call. Then would you mind if I get your fingerprinting out the way?”

  I’d temporarily forgotten the incidents that had started the whole avalanche called “What Happened When I Decided to Move to Graylee, Georgia.” Putting a brighter tone in my voice, I said, “Oh, here’s some good news, finally. It was Tara who vandalized the rental car and statue.”

  Deputy Tindale scowled at me, maybe thinking about how much work he’d just done in the wintry outdoors with frostbite imminent and snow-maggedon almost upon us. “You know that for a fact, Ms. Wright?”

  “Absolutely—she told me.”

  He removed his notebook again, looked at his two occupied hands, and paused. Then he set his stinking cup full of brown slime on the granite counter between us and clicked open his ballpoint pen so hard the plastic cracked. “Exactly when did this happen?” he demanded.

  In this case, the truth would not set me free. The truth, at best, would earn me a stern lecture and make the deputy conclude I was getting what I deserved. At worst, he’d charge me with a crime for withholding evidence. Maybe I had reaped what I’d sown, but I was not taking the fall for giving Tara a second chance. I told him, “Right before she stole the Jag, she trapped me in the basement and taunted me by saying she’d done all that damage herself.”

  “How’d you get out?”

  “I’ll take you through the whole thing after you call the DMV and put out the APB. Or whatever,” I added, ears burning because of how foolish I sounded.

  B.J. eyed me once more, put away the pen and pad, took out his cell phone, retrieved his spit cup, and trudged toward the front of the house. As he scuffed in figure-eights around my wheeled luggage near the front door, I thought about what I needed to do.

  It was the same thought I’d had before Tara rang the doorbell only a few hours ago. Way back then I needed to get a weapon for self-defense and pick out which car to drive to Cindy’s. Tara had eliminated my ability to choose a vehicle, having stolen the keys for all of them, and she’d taken my coat with the pistol in it. But Dad had owned two firearms, and I was feeling more vulnerable than ever.

  I went up the east-wing staircase to the second floor and returned to the master suite. Gripped by an irrational fear that she had snatched the second weapon, too, I rushed into my father’s bedroom, dropped to my bruised knees, and winced as splinters of the shattered porcelain lampshade jabbed through the black slacks. Ducking to peer under the bed, I banged my forehead on the wood frame hard enough to blur my vision. I groped blindly, but the gun vault wasn’t there.

  How was that even possible? Tara wasn’t just a resourceful thief and vandal—she was some kind of supernatural monster. With a groan, I fell onto my left side, ignoring the crunch of ceramic that pin-cushioned me with a hundred shards and powdered my hair, face, and clothes with flecks of china.

  Gazing into the darkness under the bed, I finally focused my eyes and noticed something blacker still. The gun vault. I’d lightened it earlier by taking the chrome pistol and ammunition, and, when I slid it back under the bed, it went farther than I’d thought. Tara was just a person, nothing more. I could deal with her.

  With mounting relief, I pulled the laptop-size black case toward me. Hopefully another confrontation wouldn’t come down to violence, but if she attacked me again, she’d get a nasty surprise.

  I sat upright in the ceramic dust, pulled the case onto my lap, and tried to open the lid. It didn’t budge. The nasty surprise was mine: in my paranoid New Yorker, always-lock-the-door idiocy, I’d closed the case earlier, turned the key in the top without a thought, and blocked myself from accessing some serious self-defense.

  Too tired to pitch another fit, I just struggled to my feet and lugged the twenty-pound case back down the stairs by its molded plastic handle. Hopefully Deputy Tindale would pick the lock for me.

  B.J. was still on the phone when I walked into the great room. He stopped talking and looked me up and down. It wasn’t a salacious leer, and it wasn’t the “Jeez, this woman’s crazy” once-over he’d given me in the kitchen. His
look said, “What the hell happened to you now, lady?”

  After glancing down at what had started the day as my favorite black wool Dolce & Gabanna pantsuit, I dropped the gun vault and said, “Back in a minute.”

  I retreated to the bathroom, where I could gape in privacy at my reflection from different angles in the mirror. The entire left side of my outfit, both knees and butt cheeks, and my hand, hair, and that side of my face bore the glittering, powdery outcome of my latest debacle.

  With my right side facing the mirror—Mom’s cowlick bobbing jauntily—I still resembled Janet Wright, intrepid heiress and would-be philanthropist and writer who was destined to find true love in tiny Graylee, Georgia. Turned the other way, I appeared to be a hapless office worker who’d been mugged by someone wielding a sock full of glitter and flour.

  Right side: “Before meeting Tara Glenmont.” Left side: “After.” Right side…left side….

  Glaring past my reflection, I noticed the walk-in shower behind me, the glass door still dappled with water from Tara’s cleanup. I definitely needed a wash and change of clothes as well. Then what? Hitch a ride with Deputy Tindale to Cindy Dwyer’s and either hunker down until a Statie caught up to Tara or I found the energy to see about new ID, credit cards, and everything else.

  Hell, I hadn’t even thought about money. When the estate cleared probate I didn’t think I’d ever need to again, but now I didn’t have a single dollar on me. I imagined my next call to Jeff Conway: “Remember that welder I asked you to hire? Scratch that—she robbed me blind. Instead I need an advance on my salary, and, by the way, could you please deliver that to me as a sack full of actual money, seeing as how I have no means of cashing a check?”

  Good news: at least I could eat for free at Denny’s until the first of the year. Bad news: I’d have to take all of my meals there for the foreseeable future. Good news…bad news….

  CHAPTER 17