If You Ever Tell (16 page)

“Only a few people whose opinion I value.”

“Oh no. If you mentioned it to
anyone
, Kent won’t ever speak to you again.”

Carmen laughed. “I’m not concerned with Kent’s opinion of me, Teri. It couldn’t be much worse than it already is, although I don’t know what I ever did to offend him. Has he ever told you?”

Teresa had a hard time jerking her thoughts from Roscoe Byrnes to Kent’s apparent distaste for Carmen. “I believe Kent just thinks all women, especially those over thirty, should be sitting home baking or something.”

“Very tactful. And very evasive. But you’re not one to pass along insults.” For some reason, Carmen’s voice sounded lighter. “How’s Mac?”

“Mac? How did you know he’d been here?”

“I didn’t. It was a guess you just confirmed.” Teresa could have immediately bitten her tongue. “Did he offer sympathy and support?”

“Yes, at first, but I handled things all wrong.”

“Oh, Teri,” Carmen moaned. “Please tell me you didn’t throw yourself into his arms and tell him you love him.”

“Of course I didn’t!” Teresa was indignant. “And I don’t love him!”

“So you say.” Carmen suddenly sounded serious. “Teri, I’m not your mother and you’re an adult, but you can’t leave yourself open to this man. You know what happened the last time—”

“Yes, I know what happened, Carmen. For heaven’s sake, you’re the one who dragged me to Club Rendezvous—”

“Only to see the club. Not to be with Mac.”

“And I didn’t invite him here today,” Teresa plowed on. “I couldn’t help it if he stopped by. What did you want me to do when he came to the door? Hide?”

Teresa took another sip of wine, waiting for Carmen to keep haranguing. Instead, Carmen said mildly, “Well, I don’t hear that lilt in your voice you used to get every time you talked about him. You said you handled things wrong. What did you do?”

“You said I wasn’t one to pass along insults. You were wrong. Can we just leave it at that?”

“I don’t get any details?”

“Not tonight.” Teri still couldn’t bear to think of the merciless things she’d said to Mac, even if she felt she had good reason to discourage any further attempts of his to see her. “I’m too tired to talk about Mac’s very short visit. It’s been an incredibly long, depressing day what with Byrnes and all…,” she ended vaguely.

“I’m sure it has been. Hearing him trying to clear himself of the Farr murders must have been a surprising, not to mention crushing, blow just when you thought the mess was about over—finally. How are you holding up?”

“Okay, considering. I certainly hadn’t expected him to put on a show so close to his execution. I guess he wanted to create a sensation before he leaves this life.”

Teresa drained her wineglass, glanced up, and let out a small, choked cry when she saw a pale face staring at her through her living-room window. Her gaze locked for a second with that of the intruder’s overly large, shadowed eyes. Then Teresa blinked and the face disappeared.

“Teri, are you all right?” Carmen’s voice grew louder over the phone. “Teri, what the hell is wrong?”

Teresa’s voice emerged scratchily around the wine that refused to make its way down her throat. “I saw a face at the front window.”

“Was it one of those Gibbs men who work for you?”

“No.”

“You said you only caught a glimpse. And you’ve been drinking.”

“I’ve had two glasses of wine in the last two hours!” Teri replied hotly. “I forgot to turn on the porch lights. I’m going to the door and look outside.”

“Teri,
no
!” Carmen almost shouted. “Have you taken leave of your senses? What if there’s a killer outside? Are you just going to open the door and invite him in?”

“A killer? That’s—” Teri broke off, realizing that opening the door was an impulsively stupid, dangerous idea. Maybe she
was
drunk, she thought. Carmen was still shouting on the phone. “Carmen, stop yelling at me. I’m not going to the door. I don’t know what I was thinking. But I am going to look out the window.”

“Teri, I’m going to call nine-one-one.”

“Not yet! Hang on a minute.”

Teresa usually closed the living-room drapes at night, but this evening she’d forgotten them. She’d remembered to lock the door. At least she hoped she had.

Panic seized her as she dashed across the room, twisted at an unmoving doorknob, meaning it was locked. “Thank God,” she muttered as Sierra, alarmed by Teresa’s obvious fear, stood behind her barking frantically.

“Be quiet!” Teri hissed at the dog nearly roaring at the front window. Teri dropped to her knees and crawled beneath the window—a trick she’d seen on television when a character didn’t want to make a perfect target of himself—raised her head slightly, and peered into an indigo night lacking a moon and at least half of its stars.

Teresa thought she heard a man’s voice. Suddenly, a blinding light flashed just above her head. She shrieked and fell backward, her heart pounding painfully, her breath gone, Sierra running in circles around her barking fiercely. The light continued to shine, bouncing around the semi-dark room, blazing over furniture, shining hardwood flooring, the telephone where even above Sierra’s racket Teresa could hear Carmen screaming, “Teri! Teri!”

Still huddled on the floor, Teresa grabbed at the dog, which leaped repeatedly at the window, spattering saliva on the glass. Teresa had finally managed to get her arms around the dog’s muscular body when again she heard a man’s voice, this time loud enough to rise above the din in the house. “Miss Farr, are you all right?” Teresa huddled on the floor, shaken by an abrupt, profound panic. “Miss Farr, it’s Josh Gibbs! It’s Josh! Miss Farr!”

Teresa felt as if she was going to pass out in relief. No one was aiming at her with a gun. Joshua Gibbs stood on her porch sending the powerful beam of their large flashlight into her house. “Josh?” she yelled. She needed to hear his voice one more time to reassure herself of his identity. “Is it you and your dad?”

“Just me, ma’am,” Josh shouted back. “You okay in there?”

“Yes, but there was someone at the window—”

“I was driving down the hill, comin’ back from a friend’s, and I saw him. Your porch lights aren’t on, but I caught him in the headlights. I drove straight on up the knoll to your house, but he still got away from me. He took off for the woods. You want me to go after him?”

“No, don’t bother.” Teresa’s voice cracked and she realized how ridiculous it was for her to stay huddled on the floor with the two of them shouting back and forth. “I’m sure he’s long gone,” she yelled, slowly getting up. “I’m coming to the door.”

Sierra still yapped and growled, but her volume had lowered and she went completely quiet when Teresa flipped on the porch light, opened the door, and the dog saw a man she knew so well. Twenty-two-year-old Josh—tall and angular like his father with Gus’s once-sharp-planed, handsome face—looked at her with his large, intensely blue eyes filled with as much excitement as she had ever seen in them. Always outwardly calm, Josh gave her a quick once-over as if to make sure she wasn’t injured, then sent her a small, comforting smile. “I was going to break down the door when you didn’t answer at first. I thought you might be lying in here hurt or unconscious. Are you sure you’re all right, Miss Farr?”

No matter how many times she’d told both Gus and Josh to call her Teresa, they both clung to “Miss Farr.” “Yes, I’m fine,” she said, still slightly breathless. “Just scared. I looked up and there was this strange face at the window.…” She paused. “You said you saw him. Did you recognize him?”

“Well, no,” Josh said slowly. He looked down and the porch light shone on the longish ash-blond hair his father always nagged him to cut. “This sounds crazy, but it didn’t really look like a man. Or a woman.”

“What?”

“I mean I couldn’t tell because of the way it—
he
, probably—was dressed. From a distance, it looked like he was wearing some kind of long black coat with a hood pulled up. No need for a coat and hood on a warm night like this unless someone wants to hide himself.”

A long black coat with a hood flashed in Teri’s mind. A hooded figure that brushed against her in a hall and sliced her arm with a razor-edged knife. She felt slightly sick at the memory. “You sure you’re okay, Miss Farr?” Josh asked.

“Yes,” she said quickly. “I’m not hurt at all. I was just startled. I saw a face and then it seemed like an hour before you yelled at me.”

“Sorry. I nearly floored the truck, but it took a few minutes for me to get up here.”

“That’s okay. I guess it was a Peeping Tom.”

“Dressed like that?” Josh said, then looked as if he’d like to take back the words. “But it’s warm and getting near Fourth of July and you know how teenagers are—always looking for trouble,” Josh said as if he was far beyond his teenage years. Teri couldn’t smother a smile, but Josh didn’t see her. He had already bent down and was picking up something that lay on the porch directly in front of Teresa’s door. “Well, huh,” he mumbled, turning it over repeatedly, staring at it in the glow of the porch light. “Wonder what this is doing here? Do you think that person left it?”

Slowly, with dread washing through her like ice water, Teresa reached for the object and stared at it in astonishment. It was Snowflake, Celeste’s horse-shaped night-light Teri hadn’t seen since the night of the murders.

T
ERESA HAD BEEN SURPRISED
and shaken when she’d found the note in her car and gotten the fax, but she’d calmed herself slightly by recognizing that at least one person couldn’t resist harassing her the week of Byrnes’s execution. After his latest confession, she’d braced herself for more of the same kind of cruel but cowardly pestering—the kind that came from someone who was content with sending written messages. She had not prepared herself for such bold torment, though.

Teresa had no doubt the night-light was the actual Snowflake. When she’d bought it, she thought it looked cold and expressionless, so she’d carefully painted the eyes rich brownish green with golden highlights and added long, curved black eyelashes. She remembered the sour looks on her father’s and Wendy’s faces when Celeste had squealed with delight over the night-light after merely muttering a polite, “Thank you,” for their gift of an expensive ornate dollhouse.

“You know what that is, Miss Farr?” Josh asked.

“It’s a night-light. A long time ago, I gave it to a little girl. She named it Snowflake.” Teresa realized her voice sounded mechanical and she was saying more than she needed to, but she couldn’t seem to stop. “I haven’t seen it for years.…”

“I wonder who left it here. Could it have been the girl you gave it to?”

“What? Good heavens,
no
!” Teresa felt like the air had fled from her lungs at the very thought of Celeste Warner at the door, returning Snowflake. It was impossible yet somehow frightening. Teresa tried to calm her voice. “No, someone must have gotten hold of it and thought it would be funny to leave it, I guess…,” she trailed off, aware that Josh was peering closely at her. She knew she looked distressed.

“Want me to get rid of it for you?”

Teresa realized her hands trembled. “No! I mean, I’d like to know who left it here and report that I had a prowler, so I guess I’ll give it to the police.”

“You want to call the police now? I’ll stay with you until they get here.”

Teresa looked back at the phone. In the distance, she could hear Carmen nearly howling, “Teri! For God’s sake, what’s going on?”

“Oh, I was talking to my friend on the phone,” Teresa said quickly. “She probably thinks I’ve been murdered. I don’t think I’ll call the police tonight—the guy is gone, anyway. I’ll talk to them tomorrow.” She was already pushing the door shut. “Thank you for the offer, but I’ll be okay here alone. I’ll just be sure to lock up tight. And would you look in on the horses? I don’t think anyone would have broken into the barn, but I’d still feel more secure if I knew they were safe.”

“Dad’s home,” Josh said, nodding at the small cottage he and his father occupied not far from the barn. “His hearing is still good enough to have picked up on them kicking and whinnying, but I’ll make sure they’re safe. Want me to call you after I’ve checked on them?”

“That’s not necessary. I’ve imposed on you enough for one night. I’ll take no call as a good sign.”

“You didn’t impose on me. I’m just mad at myself for not getting up here fast enough to catch that guy.”

“Well, you gave it a good try. Thanks for looking out for me, Josh.”

She closed the door before he could utter a word and immediately turned the lock and the dead bolt. No doubt Josh was puzzled by her abruptness, but she didn’t want him to know how upset she was, both by the significance of finding Snowflake on her porch and by the thought of facing the police. After all these years they still terrified her.

She took a deep breath and hurried to the phone, cutting off Carmen in mid-shout. “I’m here! I’m okay!”

“Couldn’t you tell me that earlier?” Carmen was still yelling. “You just left me hanging. Do you know what I was imagining?”

“That I was going deaf from your bellowing?”

“I do
not
bellow!” Carmen roared. Then, after a moment of silence, she started laughing. “I simply raise my voice.”

“That’s an understatement. I’m sorry I didn’t let you know anything. Frankly, I forgot you were on the phone. Josh was on the porch.”

“Was that young, handsome horse whisperer of yours peeping in the window?”

“No. Well, yes, because he was driving up the road when he saw someone else peeping in my window. He ran before Josh could get here, so we don’t know who it was.”

Carmen’s voice took on a comforting tone. “You sound scared to death, Teri. It was probably just some teenager prowling around on a warm summer night and he couldn’t resist looking in the window. I’m sure he’s not a threat.”

“I’m glad you’re sure, because I’m not,” Teresa said shakily. “Carmen, Josh said the person had on a long black coat and a hood. Does that remind you of anything?”

“Uh, well, it was no doubt just a disguise, someone having fun,” Carmen floundered.