I Have a Secret (A Sloane Monroe Novel, Book Three) (12 page)

“What are you doing?  This is my car—get out!” 

“Where to?” I said.

“Excuse me?”

I smiled.  “This can work one of two ways—one, I stay in the car and we drive around together until I get some answers.  Or two, I get in my car and follow you around until I’m satisfied you’re not the person I’m after.  It could take days, weeks…”

She gulped a swig of something that looked like water in a clear plastic container she held in her hand and shouted, “Okay!”

I leaned back and crossed my arms.

“I met Doug when I went to open an account at the bank last year.  I remembered him from high school, but hadn’t seen him around much since then.  Every time I went in to make a deposit or something, he was so nice to me.”

“Wasn’t that part of his job?”

She shrugged.  “I guess so, but there was something about him that drew me in.  He seemed so perfect.  And happy.  It wasn’t until I followed…”

“You mean stalked him?”

She shook her head.  “It wasn’t like that, I swear.  After work, he wouldn’t go home.  He went to the bar.  It didn’t take long for me to realize he had a drinking problem.  And then one night I overheard a guy at the bar tell him about AA.  Doug said he would start going.”

“So you joined?”

She nodded.

“And you didn’t feel bad about being around all those people who were trying to get help for their real problems?” I said.

“I thought I was doing him a favor.”

“He had a wife for that—and a family,” I said.  “It wasn’t your place to interfere.”

“Trista was popping pills, how the hell was that helping!”

“You don’t have any idea what Trista’s life has been like living with an alcoholic for so many years—don’t judge her.”

Heather smirked.  “What, she’s your friend now so you have to stick up for her?”

“There it is,” I said.

“What?”

“Candice rears her ugly head at last.”

“Candice and I are friends, so what?”  

“The more you talk, the more you sound just like her,” I said.  “Don’t let her fool you—she has a bad reputation around here.” 

“Had.”

I laughed.  “You don’t think she lost the title because she moved do you?”     

She crossed one leg over the other and glared at me, and I wasn’t sure whether it was because I’d slammed her friend or knew her secrets or both. 

“Did Candice push you to make a move on Doug?” I said. 

“It was more of a challenge.  She told me I couldn’t, and I knew I could.  And I did.”    

It was one of those moments where you looked at a person but no longer saw the same thing you did the first time. Heather’s exterior facade vanished, and I was left with a grueling image of what kind of person she was beneath her hardened exterior. It disgusted me.  

I opened the door to her car, got out and closed it behind me.  She crossed over to the driver’s side and pressed the button to lower the window. 

Exasperated, she said, “Wait—where are you going?  Are you going to follow me?”

I didn’t look back.

After spending time with Heather, I wasn’t sure she had what it took to butcher someone.  On the whole, she was a snake of a person, but more of a gopher than a viper where murder was concerned.  Candice, on the other hand, was another story.  One I’d deal with later.  At the moment I had a much older woman I needed to reacquaint myself with in Stallion Springs. 

A text popped up on my phone from Trista saying dinner had been moved to tonight.  Alexa had come home a day early as a surprise.  I glanced at the time on the dash; I still had a good four hours before I needed to be there, and I wanted to make the most of it.

I stopped at the local gas station before heading out and wasn’t surprised when I looked over and spotted Jesse in his patrol vehicle next to me.  The only difference was, when I got out to pump the gas, he didn’t even look in my direction, not even a glance, and I refused to believe he hadn’t seen me.  His Sloane radar was state of the art. 

He shifted his head around and looked at something in front of me, but I couldn’t look away.  My eyes were riveted on his face.  His red, bruised, swollen face.  I tapped on his window but he jerked his head in the opposite direction.

“Jesse, I know you can see me,” I said.  “What happened to your face?”

He let the window down a crack.  “Go away, Sloane.  You said you never wanted to see me again, so why are you talking to me?”

The area below his eye was puffy, like he’d been skewered by the horn of a bull and let it sit for a while.  I reached my hand through the opening, turned his face toward me, and gasped.  “Who did this to you?”

He shook his head.  “Oh, that’s good…real good.”

“What?”

“Like you don’t know.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

He leaned back and squinted his left eyelid at me.  The other eyelid didn’t look like it was capable of moving.  “You really don’t know, do you?  I tell you what, why don’t you call your boyfriend and ask him what happened after you went inside the hotel last night?”

I shrugged.  “It wasn’t Giovanni—he was with me all night.”

“I never said he was the one who did this to me.”

“Then you’re implying he knows who did.”

He grabbed my hand, shoving it out the window in one powerful thrust and then slammed his car into gear and peeled out. 

Thirty minutes later I arrived at the estate of Rosalind Ward, Doug’s mother.  She was known as the woman in town who had her hands in everything from city ordinances to simple street names—Tehachapi had both a Rosalind Drive
and
a Ward Avenue.  Rosalind also took pride in the fact that she owned the property next door to the late Jack Palance, an actor I’d once served dinner to when I was a clumsy no-name waitress in high school. 

The moment I drove up the long, windy road I felt her eyes glaring down at me from her second-story window, much like an eagle sizing up its prey.  As the sparrow in the situation, I exited my car and approached the front door with caution, but before I had the chance to crunch up my hand and knock, she’d opened the door and looked over every last inch of me.  I obliged her by doing the same.  She wore a white rayon shirt with a white cami underneath and white polyester slacks.  Her short hair was curled to perfection in a short coif like Elizabeth Taylor wore in 1952.  Every lock was in place, and her skin, albeit milky and smooth, looked as though it had gone through a facelift or two.  Maybe even three, she certainly had the money.  No woman her age looked that good naturally, did they?

Rosalind tapped her fingers on the glass panel of the door.  “I don’t like surprises.   There’s a reason God invented the telephone.”

“Huh,” I said.  “I always thought it was Alexander Graham Bell.”

She wasn’t amused.   

I stuck my hand out.  “You probably don’t remember me.  My name is Sloane Monroe.  I was a friend of Doug’s.”

She shook my hand like she was afraid I’d transfer some of my germs onto her and then folded one arm over the other.  “I wish people would stop coming out here.  I get it.  Everyone feels bad.  Everyone wants us to know about the time he pulled to the side of the road to help them fix a flat tire or when he held the door open for some old lady with a bag of groceries in her hands.  It’s like no one gets it.  He was my son.  I raised him.  Of course he was all those things.”

I slid my hands in my pockets and met her gaze.  “I was on the boat when he was killed.”

“Good for you.”

It occurred to me now wasn’t the best time to let her know I was overseeing my own investigation.  “As a friend, I’m just trying to sort out what happened.”

She gave me a sideways glance.  “That won’t be necessary.  We are working with the authorities to recover his body.  It’s handled.  Is that all?”

I stood there, unsure of what to say next. 

She squinched her beady eyes at me.  “You don’t remember me, do you?”

“Sure I do—everyone knows who your family is in this town.”

She smiled, pleased with my comment of flattery.  “And I’m familiar with yours.”

Of course she was—who was I to think time would make everyone forget a father who made the front page of the town paper for all the wrong reasons.

She gave her comment ample time to sink in and then continued.  “I’m the one who alerted your grandfather about your ahh, situation with your father.  Your grandfather was good friends with my own father, you know, before he retired and ran off to Park City.  I figured it was the least I could do to help your poor mother out.  It was obvious she wasn’t going to do anything seeing how she didn’t want anyone to know what was really going on, but when I saw you and your sister running up the street that day, I knew my tongue had been stilled long enough.  I wasn’t placed on this Earth to stand idly by like some kind of ninny.”

I wanted to speak, but couldn’t find the words.  Why couldn’t I remember seeing her that day?  

She frowned.  “Well, I suppose if I was in your shoes, I would have blocked my childhood out too.”

I wanted to shrink down until I was small enough to fit inside my handbag.

She cocked her head to the side and curled her lips into a snarly smile like we were playing war of the words with each other and she’d just won.  “Why else did you come here, Sloane?”

Manipulation 101 at its finest.  I forced myself out of her head and back into mine.    “Why didn’t Doug go to college?”

She shrugged.  “It wasn’t the path he was meant to take in life.”

“But he had a scholarship—I’m curious about why he gave it up to get married.  Couldn’t he have completed school and then married?  Wasn’t that what you wanted for him?”

She looked over her left shoulder for a moment like she wanted to be sure whoever was inside the house couldn’t hear and then she stepped out onto the porch and slid the door closed behind her. 

“What did Trista tell you?”

“It’s more of what she didn’t tell me that I’m interested in,” I said. 

“Such as?”

“Why’d Doug have a drinking problem?”

“Excuse me?”

“I know he was in AA.”

She turned her palms up like ‘so what’ and said, “Lots of people go there.”

“So you weren’t aware how big his problem was or how many years he’d been like that?”

She averted her eyes and gazed out at an empty field overrun with wild poppies and sagebrush.  “I’m not comfortable with your questions.”

It was nice to turn the tables for a change.

“Something drove him to drink, Mrs. Ward, and I don’t believe it has anything to do with Trista.”

She thrust her hand over her chest.  “I never said it did.”

“What happened while he was in high school?  There was an event, something that caused Doug to give up his football scholarship, what was it?” 

I stood back and waited to see if she had the courage to mention Alexa.  From the way her lips tightened into a circular ball, I’d hit on something big.  She braced her body against the door and stood like a statue for several seconds, and then folded one hand over the other and tried to act like I was a neighbor who came over to bum a cup of sugar. 

“I’d like you to go now,” she said.  “All your questions have made me tired.”

I glanced down at my phone and noticed the time.  “That’s all right,” I said.  “I’m late for dinner with Trista anyway.”

She lifted a brow at me.  “Oh?”

“Trista invited me over to meet Alexa—I guess she’s home from college for the weekend.”

The look on her face before I turned to walk toward my car was something I never thought a woman such as Rosalind Ward was capable of: Fear.