Carol Shenold - Tali Cates 02 - Bloody Murder (22 page)

JT stepped up to the car. “If you’re smart, you’ll stay away from my county unless you go through the courts and take legal action. No more threatening defenseless women.”

Lyn’s ex-husband laughed. “She’s about as defenseless as a rattler.” He got into his car and spun gravel on his way out of the driveway.

Lyn whirled on me. “Now you’ve done it. He’s gone. I could have handled it but now he’ll be back again. What the hell are you doing here, butting your nose into my business?”

I stepped back from the fury in her expression. “I was—I wanted to help,” I stammered. “I’ve been in the same position—”

She interrupted me. “I don’t care. You leave me and mine alone. And about all that stuff you asked me to do for you, you take care of it yourself. I have better things to do than look after you.”

The girls had edged out the door and come to stand by their mother. Lyn whipped her head around and shot a glance at the girls that sent them running back into the house.

JT looked stormy himself. “We came because you or one of the girls called for help. If you don’t need help, that’s fine. You have the right to come to the courthouse and file a complaint. If you don’t feel as if you’re in danger, we’ll leave.”

“Fine. You leave. I’ll take care of my own problems. I always have.”

I stood with my mouth open, staring after Lyn as she slammed her way into her house. Now I was sure of it. Two people lived in that body, the one who called for help and this hellion. I felt bad. I was thinking of her in the same way her husband talked to her.

I moved to follow her, ask for an explanation, when I ran into a barrier at the porch. Something I couldn’t see stopped me cold. Nausea shot through me. I doubled over, spinning to the left barely in time to miss vomiting all over the porch. I grew dizzy and fell forward until JT grabbed my arm and jerked me back. The nausea and dizziness instantly disappeared as quickly as they came.

“What is wrong with you? See if I ever take you with me again.” He looked concerned in spite of his sharp words.

I gasped for air, looking back at the house. It was closed in on itself, as if no one lived there. When I could speak, I cleared my throat, still tasting bile. “I don’t know. I’ll be all right in a minute, I think. I’m not sure what happened.”

But I knew. Lyn had done it. I bet I got off easy. I don’t know how, but she caused it.

Chapter Twenty-three

The next few days passed without incident. Saturday dawned crisp and cool, like a fall day should. I still didn’t know why Cass had been kidnapped, or a good reason for Lyn to be so volatile, but I carried on anyway because the Masked Ball was going to happen, and I had to be ready. Since Lyn had dropped the balls she’d offered to carry, it was up to me and anyone else I could talk into helping, like my poor defenseless children, mother, and best friend.

“Mom? Mom?” Sean yelled down from a ladder. “Does this look right?” Rusty hung onto the bottom of the ladder to keep it steady. Sean had a death grip on a swag of grass above the door.

“Looks good, honey, but don’t lean over too far.”

The Civic Center Ballroom had never looked so grand. The color theme was red and black with touches of white, to avoid the much-overdone orange and black. Instead of spraying the grasses silver, my first thought, I’d gone for white. The entire room was draped in red. A king-size Venetian mask was fastened above and on each side of the stage. They were red, white, and black, as were the smaller ones scatted up and down the red walls.

Mumsie stood back to critically examine the mask placement on the walls. “What about that spot on the east wall under the tall windows? Don’t you think it needs something else? The red swallows the light.”

“Try a couple of the white sprays and see if that brightens it up. They’d reflect the light, not absorb it.”

I arranged masks on sticks in vases on the tables sitting on either side of the main entrance. As a charity event for the local Casa organization, the ball was always well attended, especially by those professions who wanted their charity works to be high profile. The more money you paid, the closer to the food and dance floor your table.

The tables for food, wine, and chocolate stood in front of the wall opposite the stage. By nightfall, an ice sculpture of a rose and bouquets of roses would grace the tables. Blooms and More had confirmed their deliveries, the champagne truffles had arrived, and Renée had the food well in hand.

The Queen’s court was on stage, practicing the arrangement for the introduction in the middle of the festivities. The Love County Queen, Princess, and Duchess—plus runners-up from each contest—always watched the festivities from the stage, on thrones and in chairs draped in black. They already had their masks.

In front of the stage, the Classical Gas band had set up and would be playing sixties through eighties classic pop and rock with a little country thrown in like “Mustang Sally”—which I’d never classified as country myself—and the “Boot Scootin’ Boogie.”

I spotted Lyn’s jumble of bright curls by the stage where she watched her children like a hawk and studiously ignored me. I wished I could read her mind. I had to find out more about her. Cherilyn came up behind me and I jumped.

“Tense much?”

“If everyone you knew sneaked up on you all the time, you’d be agitated too.”

“Touchy, touchy. You’re as nervous as a Chihuahua on crack. What’s wrong with you?”

Sarcasm melted off my words. “Well, I don’t know. What do you think could make me that way, certainly not murder or kidnapping or any of the other stuff that’s been happening? I’m no closer to understanding what’s going on now than I was last week. JT doesn’t seem to be, either. I don’t know if someone else will break into my house, or try to run me down, or do something worse. I don’t know why.”

“Okay.” Cherilyn grabbed me by the arm. Why did people always grab me? “I’m taking you to your house and you will take a long bubble bath before you get dressed and come back. Things are going fine, everything is in place, and you promised to show me the mask you did for yourself.”

She dragged me out the main entrance and manhandled me into her car. Once home, I got into the tub. She brought me a glass of zinfandel and settled down to find something on the computer. Chaos kept sticking his paws under the door but couldn’t chase kitten-friendly bubbles with the door shut.

When I figured I’d turned into enough of a prune and heard Mumsie come home, I got out, dried off, and wrapped up in my terry robe. Wine and hot water relieved some of the tension that knotted every muscle in my body.

I walked into the kitchen. “Where’s Sean? Didn’t he and Rusty come home with you? I thought we were fixing snacks before they go out to trick-or-treat?” More trick than treat, I was sure.

Mumsie reached to retrieve coffee from the canister. “Rusty’s mom is taking them out for pizza and then they plan to dress up and head out from his house. They both want to shock us with their costumes later, they said.”

“Now what? I bought him a costume, I thought.”

“I’m sure he will alter it until he thinks it’s suitably gruesome, you know how boys are at his age.”

“Not really, but I’m sure he’ll teach me. Is your costume ready?”

Mumsie sounded a little down. “It’s ready if I decide to come. But Cass isn’t sure if she wants to go, and I know she won’t stay here by herself, so I’m going to wait to make a decision.”

“I’ll go talk to her in a minute, see if I can convince her to show up rather than stay here and make you miss out.”

“It’s not as if I have a date. It used to be more fun when I had your dad to dance with. You, on the other hand, have to show up like a good hostess so let’s see your costume.”

Her wistful tone of voice took me off guard and I gave her a quick hug. She still missed my dad.

I stuck with the color theme for my costume, a white-on-black embroidered tea gown with lace insets, a white mask rimmed by black feathers. The dress clung just right, the square neck flattering. I had a red stole, my hair on top of my head, tendrils trailing. I posed in front of the mirror, a vulnerable girl from more innocent times. Maybe not a girl, but the dress was becoming and elegant without being restrictive. I thought I might actually survive without needing to change into jeans.

Mumsie came in, a jewelry box in her hand, and stopped. “You look like a picture of your great-grandmother before World War I. I have the perfect jewelry which will also offer protection.”

I opened the box and nestled inside were a silver and jet necklace, earrings, and ring, all carved with the same Celtic design. Next to the other jewelry was the most elaborate silver comb in the same design. Now I felt everything was at peace somehow, complete.

Cass was in the kitchen.

“I know,” she said, not looking up from the book she was reading. “Mumsie wants to go to the party so I have to go too. It’s okay, but I might not dress up.”

I knew better than to argue.

“Come show me too,” Cherilyn yelled from the other room. I figured she wanted a break from my slow dial-up modem. She looked up when I walked in. “Oh, honey, that’s striking. You look like a character out of a Merchant Ivory film. Wow. Where did you find that dress and jewelry?”

“The dress is from The Barefoot Bohemian, that vintage place over in Paris that I like. If it’s unusual, it’s there. Mumsie had the jewelry, family stuff. Isn’t it too much? I feel like I stepped back in time, became someone else.”

That was overdramatic. I shook myself, went to the bedroom, and took off the dress and jewelry to put my jeans back on. I had a couple of hours before I had to be at the ballroom to greet guests, and I had to eat something before champagne-filled chocolates called my name.

Cherilyn still sat at the kitchen table tapping away on the computer. “Tali, look at this. Our Lyn the helpful really does have a split personality. She grew up in Seattle, moved farther and farther south. She reached LA before she moved east into Texas. We lucked out because she never changed the spelling of her name. It’s unusual enough to track.”

“But a lot of people move around. That doesn’t tell us anything. She’s weird and travels a lot. That doesn’t mean anything.”

Cherilyn shrugged. “Brush it off if you want but every time she moved, the place she left had something happen—rumors of witchcraft, small animal deaths, mysterious fires, unexpected injuries, often among school children.”

“You’re saying one woman is cutting a swath of destruction across the country, single-handed. That doesn’t sound reasonable.”

“You are the one who believes in magic and ghosts. Why not someone with powerful skills who wasn’t using those gifts responsibly? Look at this pattern, she was in the area each time.”

“It could be coincidence. Maybe she left those towns because of the murders, afraid for her children.” I heard myself echoing the same arguments JT had used on me.

“The woman you described in that driveway doesn’t sound like one who would be driven away by fear of being killed as much as being found out.”

“Well. Okay. Maybe she really is the cause of everything, but we have no evidence, nothing we can take to JT and say, ‘See this, arrest her, she’s evil.’ I really don’t think a reputation for wickedness is an offence anyone can prosecute. Besides, she may be a scary bitch, but that doesn’t mean she murdered anyone. She has kids, for God’s sake.”

“Tali, half the serial killers out there have families who never knew they were evil on the inside. It’s not always the ones who look like monsters who are malevolent.”

“I know, it’s the mild-mannered guy-next-door, which—guess what—points to Aiden.”

Cherilyn tilted her head. “I don’t know. Most killers aren’t hunks.”

“Did you
forget
about Ted Bundy?”

“Oh. Well, most of the time, they aren’t hunks.”

“Back to coincidence, I came back to Love, Texas and we’ve had, count them, a total of four murders since my arrival. Two last summer, two now. I was at, or close to, the murder scene each time. Doesn’t that make me a prime suspect? Plus I found the bodies.”

“Damn, Tali. You aren’t evil, she is, end of story. You wouldn’t hurt anyone on purpose. You take spiders out of the house rather than kill them.”

“Yeah, but I’d kill a snake in a heartbeat.”

“So the hell would I. Does that make me a suspect? This is getting us nowhere.” Cherilyn shut down the computer. “We need real evidence. Maybe when this Masked Ball is done, we can do something more. It’s not that I don’t like the woman—even though I don’t—it’s a feeling when I’m around her, and I haven’t been around her that much. Have you talked to Joe Wolfheart? He has good people instincts.”

I raised my eyebrows. “I can’t go up to the deputy mayor and ask him if he thinks Lyn is a witch. He’s president of the savings and loan and as straight arrow as they come. He wouldn’t gossip or believe in witches.”

“He’d probably say skin-walker. I can ask him. He’s bringing some ad copy over to the office Monday—doesn’t believe in computers but likes tall blondes. I’ll see what I can worm out of him.”

“Poor guy, he’s toast. Hey, what are you wearing tonight and don’t you need to go change soon?”

“Trying to get rid of me?”

“I know you. You take longer to get dressed than I do.”

She glanced at her watch. “Oops. You’re right, I’d better get ready. Wait until you see my outfit.”

“You’re not going to tell me about it?”

“It’s a surprise. Don’t you confront Lyn until I get there, okay? I don’t want to miss out on the fireworks.”

I stared at her. “What makes you think I’m going to confront anyone? I don’t know if I believe she’s the problem. I think I just want to go to the party tonight and have a good time. Monday will be soon enough to sort things out. Right now, my brain is tired.”

Cherilyn left to get dressed but promised to beat me to the Civic Center.

When I changed purses, I found the scrap of paper I’d written the license number on that Aiden had given me after the car incident. I called JT with it and, while I was on with him, call-waiting beeped.