After She's Gone (5 page)

 

C
assie’s phone rang the second she turned into the lot of the hotel. She glanced at the caller ID and recognized her mother’s cell number displayed on the small screen. She let the call go to voice mail as she parked around the corner from the main entrance. She’d caught sight of a Starbucks on her way, so she’d waited in line at the drive-through window, ordered a latte and a raspberry scone, and had nearly finished her drink by the time she reached the parking area of her temporary home.

“Very temporary,” she reminded herself as she took the elevator to her room, where she turned on the television, managed a quick shower, then once she’d thrown on clean jeans and a sweater, ate the scone at the small desk where her cell phone was plugged in and charging. She was still hungry when she threw the wrapper and bag into the trash, but she’d deal with a real meal later.

She needed a better plan than her hastily-put-together notion of leaving the hospital to find Allie. She’d accomplished phase one, the hospital was in her rearview, but discovering what had happened to her sister would take some serious doing, if locating Allie were even possible. There were dozens of cases of people who had just disappeared, seemingly to vanish off the face of the earth. But she didn’t believe for a second that her sister was one. First of all, the timing was too perfect. It was almost as if Allie had known there would be some kind of accident on the set of
Dead Heat
that day, that she was a target and that’s why she hadn’t shown up.

Far-fetched?

Maybe.

But with Allie, Cassie had learned, anything was possible. Even faking her own disappearance.

The questions, without answers, buzzed through her brain, like darting insects that never quite landed, never settled, never slowed down long enough to be examined and understood.

And there was no getting around that it had been Cassie’s fault. Along with her father, she’d encouraged Allie to give up her academic dreams, those scholarships and dorm rooms, or at least put them on hold, for the glitter and allure of Hollywood. Robert had insisted that they could become a successful team, the three of them, and Cassie had been so eager for his attention, she’d gone along with his plan. The ink had barely dried on her own high school diploma when Cassie had turned her car south, hit the accelerator, and drove with only two stops in eighteen hours. Filled with dreams of stardom and anxious to shake the dust of stupid Falls Crossing from her shoes, she’d beelined down the Five.

She’d landed in LA ready for her big break and ended up with big disappointment. Her roles had been few and far between. And then she’d talked Allie into joining her in California and things had only gotten worse.

She flopped down on one of the beds and considered calling her mother back, but decided she wasn’t in the mood. She needed to calm down before she dealt with Jenna, or, for that matter Shane Carter, her stepfather. The ex-sheriff. She’d never liked him, still didn’t. Too backwoodsy. And come on. A cop? Who marries a cop?

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” she said aloud, her mind returning back to the sibling rivalry that escalated when both she and Allie vied for the same roles, which Cassie inevitably lost.

Even now the old jealousy raised its hateful head, and she punched the extra pillow. She had to rein in her rapidly escaping control over her emotions and she couldn’t risk that, didn’t want to return to the hospital on the very day she’d signed herself out. She had to avoid hallucinating again and couldn’t afford to black out and lose hours of her life.

With an effort, she closed her eyes and concentrated on her breathing. She’d been out of the mental hospital less than twelve hours—hell, less than six—and she couldn’t let the fear take over, wouldn’t allow it to gnaw away at her tentative hold on reality.

She settled back on the pillows.

She imagined the air flowing out of her lungs, taking the bad memories and her fears with it.

Drawing in fresh air, she cleared her mind.

Again, she pushed out the pain.

Slowly she opened her eyes. It’d been rash thinking to toss her meds out earlier this morning, but thankfully, the doc had saved her. She slid a glance at the overnight bag and the pocket, still zippered, where the plastic bottles were tucked.

She turned her attention back to the TV. Just because she had the bottles of antianxiety meds and antidepressants in her bag didn’t mean she had to take them. They weren’t crutches, just helpmates, she reminded herself. Kind of like the therapist who’d been working with Lucinda as she learned to balance and walk again. Tiny little aides.

Oh, yeah, just like that Rolling Stones’ song Dad loves, “Mother’s Little Helper.” Weren’t those lyrics written about diazepam or some other tranquilizer half a century ago?
There had been dozens of references in other songs as well, though they escaped her now.

Sighing, Cassie thought about Allie with her pixieish face and hair that shined between gold and red, thick tresses that curled and waved and caught the sun’s rays to look as if they were on fire. Her freckles were faint, her eyes bright and expressive. Though Allie’s coloring was more like their father’s, she was as photogenic and alive on film as her famous mother. Another irony, Cassie thought, as she had been told from the time that she could remember that she was the spitting image of Jenna Hughes. Cassie’s hair was lighter than Jenna’s, but her eyes were the same shade of green and her facial structure of high cheekbones, arched brows, and sharp chin were much the same. But it hadn’t helped.

The camera loved Allie. It caught her inner spark. That’s all there was to it. And Cassie? Not so much. Allie had shown up in LA, and with a little help from their father, who had once been a Hollywood producer, landed her first commercial. That success was followed quickly by a bit part on a nighttime drama. And that small part had been a stepping-stone to another, bigger role on television, and within the year, she had a contract for a movie, the script of which was altered for her, her role expanded.
Voila!
Allie Kramer, not her older sister, became the daughter who followed in their mother’s glittery footsteps.

Cassie had struggled on for a while, then finally had turned to writing. To her surprise she’d found that, as her English teacher at Falls Crossing High, Mrs. Crosby, had predicted, she had a knack for script writing.

Which was something.

And this . . . Allie’s disappearance . . . was one hell of a story. The disappearance of an ingenue who had taken Hollywood by storm? It was golden. So, okay, that was stretching it a little. Allie was far from a wide-eyed innocent, and she hadn’t wowed producers and directors all at once, had actually kind of crept in the back door her father had opened, but she had gained some fame and she’d narrowly escaped an assassin’s bullet.... Well, that was definitely stretching the truth, but who really knew? She had indeed disappeared without a trace. Somehow Allie had pulled off the impossible.

Cassie felt a sharp pang, one of real worry. However, she didn’t believe Allie was really gone. No. Her sister was alive. She had to be. There was no death scene at the end of her screenplay.

“You’re a true bitch,” she said to her reflection in the full-length mirror mounted on the wall near the bathroom. She was capitalizing already on her sister’s troubles. She’d been searching for a new idea for a screenplay and Allie’s story, as told by her older sister, was a gift. Though she’d pushed these thoughts to the back of her mind while she was in the hospital, her destiny now seemed clear.

And Allie was
not
dead. She just had to find her.

Grabbing up her phone, she felt a jab of guilt about not calling her mother, but pocketed the cell anyway and headed out again. She had work to do and for some reason she felt as if the clock was ticking, not just the seconds of her life, but the time to solve this mystery.

“Oh, shut up!” she sputtered. She made certain the privacy sign was positioned over the door handle of her room, then double-checked to see that the lock engaged.

Her next stop? Allie’s apartment, the one she’d leased during production of
Dead Heat.
The cops had already been through it, of course, but Cassie hadn’t been since the last time she’d seen her sister.

In her mind’s eye, she caught a glimpse of Allie as she’d last seen her. Small, scared, but angry enough to glare at her older sister. “This is all your fault,” she’d said, in a barely audible whisper. Her face had been devoid of makeup, tears streaming from her expressive eyes, wetting her lashes. She’d seemed, at that moment, so much younger than her years. “If something happens to me, Cassie, you’re to blame.” She dashed the teardrops from her face. “Remember that. Okay? You. And you alone. You’re the reason!”

 

Trent heard the familiar rumble of Shorty O’Donnell’s half-ton truck grinding its way down the lane. He turned, a carton of roof shingles balanced on one shoulder, and spied Shorty hunched over the wheel of his twenty-year-old pickup, the older man squinting through the windshield. Originally painted red and tan, the Chevy was now equipped with a faded green front panel and black tailgate, replacements for original parts that had been dented so badly they’d been scrapped long ago. New dents had appeared over the years.

Trent didn’t have to check his watch to know that Shorty was late.

Then again, Shorty was always late. Had come into the world three weeks overdue according to his mother and hadn’t caught up since. As long as Trent had known him, over three decades, Shorty had always shown up long after he was due. Today was no exception. No big surprise there.

Trent walked into the barn, stacked the final carton on top of the others he’d hauled from the local lumberyard. By the time he was outside again, the rain that had been threatening all day had begun in earnest. No more misting drizzle, now the heavy drops poured from the thick underbellies of the clouds huddling overhead.

Shorty parked and hopped down from the cab of his truck to the gravel spread between the outbuildings. “Sorry about the time. Damned cows got out at my place. Sheeeit, I’m gonna have to patch that fence again.” He looked up from beneath the brim of his Oregon Ducks cap, rain drizzling from its bill. The ranch hand was half a foot shorter than Trent, whip-thin, and tough as nails when he wanted to be. He was wearing his usual outfit: a short yellow slicker, jeans, battered boots, and the University of Oregon cap, though Trent was certain Shorty had never set one booted foot on the campus in his life.

Shorty asked, “You need help with the load?”

“Just finished.” Trent slammed the tailgate closed, heard the lock click, but gave it a tug, just to be sure it would stay latched.

“So I guess I should get to work inside?” He hitched his grizzled chin toward the machine shed where the old John Deere was waiting for a part that was due into town within the week. So far it hadn’t shown up.

“Yeah.” Trent eyed the weathered barn with its attached grain silo. He’d love to start roofing the sucker, but rain was forecasted for the next three days, so it was best to wait as it would be easier and safer to peel off old shingles and walk on the sloped roof when it was dry. He scowled, hated to be held up by the weather, Mother Nature, or God Himself. His cell phone vibrated in his pocket, but he ignored it. Probably just another reporter looking for a new angle in the Allie Kramer mystery. As Allie’s sister’s husband, he sometimes got calls where nosy members of the press asked questions he’d rather not answer.

Trent whistled for his dog, who’d sneaked inside and curled up on an old horse blanket the barn cats usually claimed. “Hud. Come.” The mutt, a speckled shepherd who had wandered here as a half-grown pup, bounded into the rain, then beelined for the porch, where he sat and waited near the door, his feathery tail dusting the old floorboards.

“He don’t like the rain much,” Shorty observed. “Seems as if maybe he should be a California dog or an Arizona dog. Somewhere where it don’t drizzle all the damned time.”

Trent pulled the barn door shut, the casters screeching a bit.

“Could use a little lubricant on them wheels.”

Trent nodded.

“Think I saw a can of WD-40 in the equipment shed,” Shorty went on. “I’ll give ’em all a squirt today.”

“Good idea.”

“So, guess what I heard in town?” Shorty said, returning the conversation to where he’d begun. “It’s about your wife.”

Trent tried not to change his expression. “I’m not married.”

“Ain’t ’cha?” Shorty questioned.

“We’re separated.” Shorty already knew this, he was just yanking Trent’s chain. “It’s just a formality.”

“A legal formality.”

“Okay, I’ll bite. What did you hear?” Trent asked impatiently.

“Well, I had to stop in town, for some wire to patch the damned fence and, well, decided to have a quick one before I came over. It was all the talk at Keeper’s,” he said, mentioning a favorite local pub.