21 Dares: A Florida Suspense Mystery (9 page)

The
man removed his brown hat, putting it to his chest, covering his heart. He
allowed a moment of silence. This house was waiting for her. He felt it.

Moving
up the steps, he came to the upstairs landing. There was no light, and he
removed a flashlight from a pocket in his trench coat. Highlighting the walls
then sweeping down to the floor, he walked slowly through the hallway.

Abbie
and her sister had hid here, the night they heard the intruder in the house.

He
paused, shined the light on the ceiling. The scuttle to the attic loomed
directly above him. Reaching up, he grabbed the cord. The ladder dropped.

Chapter 10

M
cKenzie and I were never friends, not really,” Abbie
said while sitting in her therapist’s office. She was still thinking about
yesterday’s lunch with McKenzie. It was on her mind when she woke up, and she replayed
the entire conversation in her head. She told Clinton Reed all about it when he
Skyped to wish her happy birthday. This time it was actually on her birthday. Though
it didn’t feel like it. There were no balloons. No presents. No cake. No one
sang Happy Birthday. In fact, other than Clinton Reed and McKenzie Thomas, no
one really even noticed.
Or cared.

By
the end of the day, Abbie walked to the Cypress Center Building, feeling a
little sorry for
herself
, and sat across from Dr.
Wachowski, like she did every Wednesday and Friday afternoon.

“But
she’s your only friend who wished you Happy B-day.” Dr. Wachowski sat back in
his chair and brought his left leg over his right knee. Abbie folded her arms
and leaned back on the couch.

“To get me to buy into her Vitamin Ritamin
business.”

“Childhood
boo contacts Pop to track you down, buys you lunch, meet-n-greet the bae and
invites you to go out on Friday night, on your b-day nonetheless,” Dr. Wachowski
said. “Hashtag: BFF.”

A
chill ran down Abbie’s back.
On your b-day nonetheless
.
It was exactly what McKenzie had
said. The phrase and the way he said it felt like an echo. Abbie shrugged it
off to coincidence. “I’m telling you, it’s not about me. It’s not about my
birthday. She just wants to increase her down-line.”

“Fair
enough. How about telling me your Webster’s for the word friendship.”

The
concept bounced around in Abbie’s head a moment. She wanted to say this in a
way that made sense.

“Friends
are people who have your back.” She looked up at the ceiling, then back at Dr.
Wachowski. The blue tattoo on his arm wrapped around his elbow and disappeared
beneath his sleeve. It made her wonder what his high school and college life
was like. What kind of friends did he have? Did they put up with his inane
wannaa-be-hip lingo?
Probably, if they were true friends.

True friends.
That’s what she wanted.
Friends who had her back.
That’s what she always
wanted. And, he’d been right all along. She decided to go ahead and say it. “Like
the Scoobies.”

There.
Now it was out there.

“The Scoobies?”
Dr. Wachowski smoothed
the hair on his chin with the tips of his fingers. “You’re referring to
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
again?”

“Yeah,”
Abbie said. “Friendship, true friendship, is like when Willow, Xander, and
Giles joined hands and performed this enjoining spell, and their individual
strengths rushed into Buffy.
 
She was
fighting this Frankenstein-like soldier thing that couldn’t be killed, and she
rose from the rubble with magical, orange eyes, speaking in some ancient
Sumerian tongue. Buffy used the combined powers of the Scoobies to save the
world. They had her back.”

There
was a long silence and Dr. Wachowski seemed focused on his notebook. He
smoothed the beard on his chin to a fine point. Finally, he looked up at her.

“Is
this why
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
is
so appealing to you?” he asked, setting his pen down on the notepad.
“Because it’s about a girl who literally faces her demons and
wins.”

“No,
that has nothing to do with it.” Abbie watched him fold his left foot over his
right knee again. He wore Jesus sandals, like he always did, and she couldn’t
help but stare at his hairy big toe. He needed to clip the toenail. Looking
away, she glanced at her watch. There was still another half hour to go.

“Then
what is it?” Wachowski asked. Abbie didn’t answer, and the doctor continued.
“Do you think your interest in Buffy is connected to that night when you were a
child? When you were powerless to stop the monster that broke into—”

“No, absolutely not.”
She didn’t want him to
finish that question and grasped the unicorn pendant hanging from her neck.
Without thinking, she tugged on it as she spoke. “I feel like one of the Scooby
Gang. They didn’t have a normal high school or even a normal college experience,
or a normal home life, and I don’t either.”

“That’s
no JOMO, girl! You have
a boo
who is reaching out to
you. A real live person say’n ‘Let’s get this party started’ and your head
is
in a fictional cemetery from a TV show no one remembers
or cares about anymore.”

Abbie
swallowed. She was tempted to defend Buffy, but didn’t. It was her fault for
bringing it up in the first place. “TV show relevance aside,” Abbie spoke
slowly, still smarting from the slide on her hero. “If the boo you’re referring
to is McKenzie Thomas, I haven’t talked to her in two years.”

“So
Styles is out. You still got Payne and Malik—”

“Let’s
drop the boy band references,” she said. “If you want to talk about pop culture
references that no one remembers or cares about—”

“Sorry not sorry.
Hashtag: can’t take a
joke!” He held up his hands, as if surrendering, and revealed the blue tattoo
was a thorny vine wrapping around his forearms. “Let’s discuss the other
compadre in your life.”

“You
mean, Susan.” Abbie regarded her roommate a moment. “Yeah, she’s friendly and
all, but she doesn’t really get me. She’s not a Scoobie.”

“How
is she different?”

“Buffy
and Xander and Willow, they’re misfits. They’re picked on. But they had each
other. They could call each other up. They could rely on each other.”

“And
you don’t have anyone like that in your life?”

“No,” Abbie
said quietly. “No, I really don’t.” She stared at him. That rumination put a
bad taste in her mouth. It rippled along her tongue and down her throat like
soured milk.

“Abbie,
girl, you got a whole world of love knock’n on your door and you just need to
answer it. Hello? Come in. Now, go get yo some!” Dr. Wachowski snapped his pen
and dropped it into his shirt’s breast pocket. He shut his notepad. “But we’ll
have to dive into that next week. I gotta dipset.”

Abbie
looked surprised. “What?”

“We’ll
pick it up from here next week,” he said. “I got a bluebird lined up tonight.
Plus,” he said slowly. “It is your b-day, isn’t it? You’re all twenty-one
candles, am I right?”

“Yes.
Officially.”

He
smiled at her.
“So what’s on the I.T. for your big two one?”

“Nothing, really.”
Abbie frowned. “I guess
I could go to McKenzie’s multi-level marketing thing.”

“There,
you see. Now you got
a bluebird
too.”

Abbie
got up, grabbed her purse and crossed the room, then hesitated at the door. She
looked back at Dr. Wachowski. “Doctor,” she asked. “Do you have a patient named
Rocky Stern?

He
looked taken back. “Abbie, I can’t even.”

“Okay,”
she said, thinking about the answer a moment.
“So then you’re
saying you do, right?
You have a patient named Rocky Stern, but you
can’t discuss him.”

“Abbie.
Please.” An awkward laugh gurgled up from his throat. “I can’t have this
conversation with you.”

“Sorry not sorry.”
She conceded and shut
the door behind her.

Leaving the Cypress Center office building, Abbie held
the glass doors open for a grey-haired fellow wearing a bright red t-shirt with
the word “RACHE” sprawled across his chest. He caught the door’s edge, nodding
a silent thank you as he walked past her. Outside, Abbie looked up. The sky had
cleared and seagulls swooped and cried overhead.
The sidewalks were crowded.
Cars passed back and forth on Fletcher
Street, and a woman pushed a cart full of groceries from the Cuban grocery.

Abbie
made her way to the curb, where an impatient group waited for the crosswalk
light to change. She joined them, and idly looked over her shoulder at the
office building behind her. She noticed a man headed up the steps. It was him.

Rocky Stern.

Abbie
raised a hand and called his name. He didn’t respond. She pushed her way toward
him, through the crowded sidewalk. When she got to the front steps, he was
gone.

Abbie
considered going back inside the building to catch up with him, then thought
better of it. He was probably headed to Dr. Wachowski’s office. She knew she’d
seen him in the waiting room, and this proved it. She wondered why he’d claimed
he hadn’t seen Dr. Wachowski at lunch yesterday,
then
realized he was probably keeping it under wraps. Perhaps he didn’t want
McKenzie to know he was seeing a therapist. However, nowadays, who wasn’t?

Abbie
returned to the street corner. A new group was waiting at the light now, and
she stood between them. She looked at the crosswalk sign, at a few of the
impatient faces surrounding her, then, for some reason, behind her shoulder.

She
saw the tan trench coat and brown hat. The man stood at the Cypress Center building
entrance, his face lost in the shadow of his low slung hat.

Chapter 11

A
bbie stepped back, bumping into the grey-haired fellow
again. She looked at his bright red “RACHE” shirt, then back toward the office
building.
 
She couldn’t find the man in the
trench coat. She’d lost him in the crowd.

Abbie
moved away from the street corner. Pushing through pedestrians, she ran down
the sidewalk and rounded the corner of the Cuban grocery. She crouched down
along the building edge and peeked around it. She saw him again.
Brown hat.
Tan trench coat. He waited at the entrance to the
office building.
Just stood there.
As if he
were
expecting someone.

Without thinking, Abbie was on her feet and
bolted into the side street along the supermarket.
Breaks
squealed as drivers swerved around her.
A horn blared. A deep, angry
voice screamed, “You on drugs Look where you’re going!?” Abbie had a blurred
impression of the white florist delivery truck that almost hit her. Standing on
the opposite sidewalk, panting, she lifted her head. The truck turned on a side
street. Several pedestrians paused, backed up,
then
hurried on their way.

Abbie looked back, across the street, where
she had just come from. There were people everywhere – shoppers waiting for the
bus, teens riding bikes, kids on skateboards, a dog walker on roller blades ,
mommies pushing strollers. Just about everyone seemed focused on their phones. Abbie
looked down the block, but the brown hat and tan trench coat had vanished.

Turning,
she scrambled across the sidewalk and into a Starbucks coffee shop. She plopped
down onto a table next to the front window and watched the passing crowd. She
saw no sign of the man. Taking her phone from her purse, she dialed Susan’s
number.

“I’m
glad you called.” Susan’s voice came through loud and clear on Abbie’s phone.
She launched into her story without as much as a hello. “So, I took my phone to
the New Horizons Cellular on Bruce B. Downs and got it wiped. Then I went home
and restored my back-up and I got everything back. But, now I can’t receive SMS
text messages because I restored everything from my computer back-up, even
though the New Horizons Cellular guy told me there wouldn’t be any problems.”

“Susan.”
Abbie tried to interrupt her, but it was pointless.

“So
now, basically, I wasted my entire day running around like some game show
contestant who doesn’t know any of the answers but tries anyway and fixed
absolutely nothing.”

“Susan,”
Abbie said again. “He’s here. He’s following me.”

 
“What? Who’s following you?”

“The strange man.
He’s following me again.”

“This again?
You always think
someone is following you.” Susan’s tone turned chilly. “Where are you? You’re
usually home by four anyway.”

“Not
on Wednesdays and Fridays.”

“Since when?

Abbie
sighed. She didn’t have time for this. “Susan, I go see my therapist every
Wednesday and Friday.”

“Since when?”

“For
the last two months, ever since I moved in with you.”

“You
never told me—“

“Susan,
please.” Panic rose in Abbie’s voice. “There’s a man following me. Just come
get me.”

“Didn’t
you hear me? My cell’s got issues. Now if someone wants to get in touch with me
but they don’t have an iPhone, they’re going to have to use Kik. I’m so ready
to strangle someo—”

“Please,”
Abbie pleaded. “Come get me.”

“Okay.
Okay,” Susan said. “Where are you?”

“I’m
at the Starbucks on the corner of Fletcher and Spruce.”

“Stay
there. I’m on my way.” Susan hung up. Abbie looked out the window and watched
the crowd. She didn’t see any sign of the man, but that didn’t stop her from
keeping a watchful eye on the street.

Maybe
coming back to Tampa was a bad idea after all.

Maybe
she didn’t belong here.

After
that
night
, she and Clinton Reed moved in with her grandparents in Pembroke
Pines. He stopped working the graveyard shift. In fact, she didn’t remember him
ever having a job again. “Your Daddy’s too sad to work,” her grandma would say.

He just stayed home and played checkers or
built Lego houses with her. Sometimes he would even play dolls and, if he was
really up to it, he would play tea party. And he always had this saying.

“When it rains,” he would ask her, and she
would answer, “Look for rainbows.”

“And when it’s dark,” he would tell her, and
she would finish the sentence. “Look for stars.”

When Abbie turned six and other children
started grade school, Clinton Reed kept her home. He taught her the alphabet
and how to spell. Addition and subtraction came next, as Abbie was home-schooled.
She didn’t mind really. Sometimes she would watch the school bus stop at the
corner, and stare at the kids climbing out of it. They’d walk along the street,
past her grandparent’s home, and disappear into houses down the block.

She
didn’t belong there, in Pembroke Pines, either. Abbie realized that the older
she got. That’s why she applied for BHU. That’s why she returned to Tampa.

That’s
why she was waiting for Susan now.

Thirty minutes later, Susan’s blue Honda Civic pulled up
to the curb and Abbie ran out of the coffee shop. She piled into the passenger
seat as fast as she could.

“Thank you for picking me up,” Abbie said.
Susan pulled into traffic, cutting off a motorcycle.

“Why am I seeing so many dudes on crotch
rockets lately?” She mashed her horn. It blared for several seconds. “Have you
noticed they all have GoPros attached to their helmets like it’s some kind of
YouTube cult to see who can post the bloodiest
crash.
At least it’s entertaining.”

“I think it’s the adrenaline,” Abbie said,
sinking deeper into her seat.

Susan merged into traffic and they headed for
the apartment. After a few minutes of silence, she glanced over at Abbie. “How
were classes today? As if I even need to ask. BHU is nothing but a retirement
community for people who peaked in high school.”

 
“Classes
were fine.” Abbie turned her head to look at the street behind her. “It’s the
strange man following me that’s the problem. I’ve seen him a few times, like
the other night.” Abbie debated whether to tell Susan about Rocky Stern, or
seeing him at her therapist’s office and then meeting him again at lunch with
McKenzie. Abbie wasn’t even sure if it was actually
Rocky
walking into the building.

Susan glanced at her. “What does he look
like?”

“He’s wearing this trench coat and hat.”
Abbie turned back around in her seat. She still felt shaken. “Every time I’ve
seen him, he’s wearing the same thing.”

“So, like, how many times have you seen him
now?” There was a critical tone in Susan’s voice. She was clearly making fun of
the situation.
“This strange man wearing a hat and trench coat.”

Abbie shook her head. “I’ve seen him twice
this week when I was leaving Dr. Wachowski’s office.
Then
again when I was waiting for a friend at SoGo Sushi.”

“Well, you’re safe now.” Susan came up on a
slow moving Buick and tailgated behind it. She honked again,
then
maneuvered around it. Passing the car, she screamed at the driver then turned
to Abbie.

“I think you’re feeling stressed. You’ve been
gone a long time.” She slammed the brakes as they strolled up to a red light.
“It’s funny. I know if I leave for a couple of days, it feels like I’ve been
gone a couple of years. I come home and everything’s different. I swear Tampa
is part of a different space-time continuum.”

“That’s not it,” Abbie said quickly. She
decided to tell Susan about Rocky. “I keep thinking about this guy I just met. He’s
the
fiancée
of this girl I used to know.”

“And now you think this guy is following you
too?”

“Not too. I think he’s the one… maybe… I
don’t know.”

 
The
light turned green and Susan’s foot mashed the accelerator, launching her Civic
into a left turn between a break in oncoming traffic. Then, she slammed the
brakes again. Abbie lurched forward in her seat, the seat belt restraining her
from hitting the dashboard. Susan honked repeatedly as two boys jogged across
the intersection.

“I swear my soul grows darker every time a
pedestrian ruins a left turn.” Susan thumped the steering wheel. Oncoming
traffic passed, and Abbie’s anxiety heightened.
Though this
time for a different reason.
Susan slapped her steering wheel and
screamed. “I think all pedestrians should be banned. You either drive or stay
home.”
 

Traffic finally cleared and Susan crossed
into the apartment complex parking lot. She pulled into her regular spot and
turned off the engine. Abbie took a breath,
then
noticed Susan staring at her. “It’s your birthday today, right?”

“All day long,” Abbie took two deep breaths
then said a silent prayer, thanking God for getting her home safely.

“Your
twenty-first birthday?”
Susan checked her makeup
in the rearview mirror and ran a hand through her short hair.

“It’s really no big deal.” Abbie got out of
the car and slammed the door shut. She headed for the staircase. Susan followed
and Abbie spoke as they climbed up the steps to the third floor landing. “I
just want to feed Clem, shut my bedroom door, and read.”

“That’s no way to celebrate.”

They walked through the third floor hallway.
Traffic noise from the street below echoed in the open stairwell. The baby
still cried behind one closed door, and the television volume in another
apartment seemed louder than before. Coming to 3-C, Susan took out her keys and
inserted one into the deadbolt. She talked rather loudly – rather awkwardly –
as she unlocked the door.

“Well, we’re home now and about to come
through the front door!” She paused at the threshold. “So, I guess Abbie, you
can sit in your room alone if that’s what you want to do when you walk inside
the apartment!”

Susan pushed the door open as Clem raced out.
The cat rubbed between Abbie’s ankles and meowed.

“What’s wrong, Clem?”Abbie said, picking him
up. The cat meowed again and Abbie kissed its nose and put it on her shoulder.
She stroked it as she stepped into the dark apartment. “Something spooked h—”

Abbie stopped mid-sentence as the apartment
lights flipped on and several people sprang up from behind the sofa and chairs
and popped out of the little kitchen.
 

“Happy Birthday!” they screamed in unison.

Abbie jumped backwards. Clem meowed and
bolted from her shoulder. The cat scrambled across the living room, past the
guests and disappeared into her bedroom, as Abbie gazed into the apartment. McKenzie
Thomas hopped in the center of the living room, tossing confetti in the air.
The twins were beside her, blowing party horns that unraveled with a loud
squeak then raveled back-up. Leaning against an arm on the couch, Abbie’s
landlord stood with his hands in his pockets. A woman Abbie didn’t fully
recognize was on the other side. She thought it might be the lady who cleaned
the apartment on Tuesday mornings. A banner hung along the wall, partially
covering the TV set. There were several wrapped presents on the coffee table
and a birthday cake with twenty-one candles. Abbie looked back at Susan.

“What can I say?” Susan said, pushing the
door open a little wider.
“Happy Twenty-First.”

* * * *

Sitting
behind his steering wheel, he watched the apartment building. Abbie Reed and
the tall roommate had parked and walked up to the third floor landing. He knew
people were waiting inside their apartment. He knew they would be celebrating
Abbie’s birthday. He even knew the guest list.

He
pulled the notepad from a pocket beneath his tan trench coat. Licking his index
finger, he turned the pages and scanned his annotations. He came to a list of
names.

Abbie
Reed

Susan
Nichols

Lindsey
and Lindsay Tatiana

McKenzie
Thomas

Landlord

Cleaning
Woman

He
crossed through Abbie and Susan’s names.