Killer Love (37 page)

I was debating calling Hutch to ask about Liza when the phone rang and, as if my thoughts had conjured him, I heard Hutch’s voice on the other end.

“I’d like to drop by if I could,” he said abruptly.

“Why?”

“I need to ask you a few questions.”

“About?”

“I’m gathering information about the fire. I’m sure you heard about it, right?”

“Yes. I saw it on the news.”

He was silent for a moment. “I really need to come out. Will you be home?”

Reluctantly, with dread and curiosity surfacing in me, I replied, “Sure, come on out.”

Hutch arrived fifteen minutes later. I let him in, glancing at the darkening sky. Were we due to get more rain? I’d have to make this quick. Otherwise, Hutch might be stranded here again.

“Liza told me she was out here yesterday,” he stated as soon as we were inside.

“Yes, she wanted to offer her condolences about Patrick.”

He nodded. “Kind of funny how things are happening to people who come to visit you lately, huh?”

I went cold, then something seized around my heart. “You think I had something to do with this?”

He peered at me, his eyes cold and assessing. “I think there are some pretty odd things happening, and you’re at least mildly connected to all of them.”

“Other than her visit, how am I connected to Liza’s house fire?”

He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled something out, opening his hand so I could take a look. “Recognize this?”

A small, silver thimble rested in the center of his hand. I shrugged. “I’m not a crack investigator like you, but I’d say it’s a thimble.”

He ignored my sarcasm and said, “Yes, I’d say it is. Where were you last night just before midnight?”

“Sleeping.”

“Alone?”

I wanted to say ‘None of your business’ or ‘What the hell do you think?’, but I didn’t want to agitate the situation, and it
was
his business. I was a suspect.

“Yes, alone,” I replied tightly.

He closed his hand around the thimble and dropped it back into his pocket. “Liza doesn’t sew. This was found in the general vicinity of where the fire started.”

It took a moment for his meaning to sink in. “You think it was me? That I carry a pocket full of thimbles and I inadvertently dropped one while skulking about, doing my dirty deed?”

“I’m not saying that. I’m just saying, you sew, Liza doesn’t. I’m sure, at one time or another, various objects wind up in a jacket pocket and a person may not remember them being there. I’m also sure that they can occasionally fall out unnoticed.”

I sucked in a breath, hardly believing what I was hearing. “Are you here to arrest me?”

He shook his head. “Right now, everything we have is circumstantial. Not enough to press charges.”

“I see. You want to be sure you can get a conviction before you take me in.”

“That’s pretty much how it works, but we need all the information before we take
anyone
in. Right now, we’re just asking questions.”

“Very accusatory questions.”

“Fact-gathering questions. A thimble is just a thimble. Lots of people own them, I would imagine.”

“Yes, I would imagine.”

“But not everyone who owns a thimble recently had their property vandalized. Or had a hated uncle conveniently die, or had a woman with whom they share a—
tense
—past almost perish in a mysterious house fire.”

“Oh my God, you can’t be serious. You really think I did those things? That I’m capable of doing something like that?”

“I’m a cop and I have to think like a cop. Be objective. Everyone is a suspect or no one is a suspect.”

I stepped closer, tears brimming, my voice a whisper. “What about as a man?”

The air grew heavy with tension. Outside, I heard the low rumble of thunder, just like the anticipation rumbling through my body. I could barely breathe as I waited for his response.

His gaze bore into mine, glimmering with intensity. “As a man, I have to remember that things are not always what they seem. My heart wants you to be innocent, but I can’t let my love for you blind me to the truth.”

Stunned, I nearly took a step back. I was speechless for a moment before repeating incredulously, “Love? You love me?”

“Yeah,” he said miserably. “I love you. I never
stopped
loving you.”

I wasn’t sure how I felt about him. I knew I felt something. I just didn’t know if it was love. I knew I got this little thrill every time he was near. I knew the other night our almost passion had left me yearning and feeling desperately hollow inside.

But, was that love?

“That was a very long time ago,” I said, bewildered. “And since then...”

“Since then, nothing’s changed. I’ve loved you all these years, every second, every minute, of every day,” he said, although he didn’t really sound like a man declaring his undying love. He sounded like a man who’d just been informed football had been outlawed, and Budweiser made you impotent.

“Then why? If you love me, how could you think...?” I couldn’t finish. It was mind-boggling, both that he thought me a killer, and that he loved me. I wasn’t sure which one shocked me more.

He raked a hand through his hair, his expression tormented. “I don’t know what to think. But I have to consider the evidence. And, there’s your family history—”

I gasped, stepping back, a jagged pain ripping through me. The air left my body as if he’d punched me in the stomach. I thought maybe I did love him; otherwise, he wouldn’t have the power to hurt me this much.

“Get out,” I said hoarsely.

“Isabelle, I’m...” He reached out to me then let his arm drop.

“Get out,” I repeated. “And don’t come back until you’re ready to arrest me.”

He stared at me a moment longer then walked out the door. I watched him leave, my soul as dark and cold as the night into which he vanished.

I shut the door and went into the living room where my mind did a macabre version of
he-loves-me, he-loves-me-not
, that went,
he-loves-me, he-thinks-I’m-a-killer, he-loves-me, he-thinks-I’m-a-killer
...

What if I really was charged? I’d never even entertained the thought of going to prison. I mean, if you didn’t do anything wrong, you couldn’t wind up in jail, right?

Wrong.

Innocent people were sometimes convicted. I wasn’t sure about the statistics, but I knew it happened. And the thought scared the hell out of me. Almost as much as the whispers, the speculation, the very real threat that I, like my father and grandmother, could possibly someday go insane. Maybe if I went to prison, I’d
want
to be insane. Maybe it would be easier to cope that way.

No, I didn’t want to be crazy, didn’t want to go to prison, and I didn’t want to love a man who thought I might be a killer.

But I was afraid all of those were very real possibilities, and an abject sadness filled the spot in my heart where the fear had been.

I don’t know how long I sat there, or how long I cried, but just before bedtime, the sky opened up and cried with me.

Chapter Four

I spent the next two days waiting for the authorities, hopefully not Hutch, but most likely him, to show up at my door, slap on the cuffs, and haul me to jail.

Instead, one evening just after I’d eaten dinner and settled in front of the television to watch a mindless sitcom, Liza stopped by.

I opened the door, shocked to see her looking a little less striking than usual. She wore gray sweatpants and an oversized Old Navy T-shirt. Her mass of red-gold hair was in wild disarray, making it look as though shimmering flames surrounded her face.

“Liza, come in.” She did, without speaking, stalking past me into the living room. Her tennis shoes creaked as she paced the hardwood floor.

“I’m so sorry about what happened,” I said. “I wanted to check on you, but I wasn’t sure how to reach you, where you were staying...” I trailed off, out of excuses, especially when none of them were valid.

She raked her hands through her hair over and over, pacing and breathing fast, almost panting. “I tried so hard. Nothing has worked. Nothing has worked and now I have to take care of it myself.” She muttered the words, some of them almost indecipherable, under her breath.

A sliver of anxiety trickled through me. She didn’t look...
right
, didn’t
sound
right. Was she on drugs?

“Liza? What’s wrong?”

She whirled on me, her expression twisted in a mask of such fury I took a step back. “You!” she screamed. “
You’re
what’s wrong. Always have been.”

“What do you mean?” I asked in barely a whisper, shock rendering me almost mute.

“I thought you were leaving, thought you wouldn’t be here long. But you just…stayed.” Her eyes were wild, glinting with something angry...something evil. “You stayed around until Rick started paying attention to you again. Started wanting you.”

“He doesn’t want me. We’re just friends. Barely even that.”

“Ha! You think I haven’t seen? Think I don’t know? Just like years ago. It’s always been you.”

“Liza, you’re not making any sense,” I said, starting to back away. And then it dawned on me. She must be behind what had been happening. She... “Are you the one who destroyed my studio?”

She smiled triumphantly. “You thought it was Patrick, didn’t you?”

Patrick...surely she hadn’t...I was trying to assimilate all of this when she reached into her jacket pocket. Her hand came out, holding a small black pistol.

Oh, shit.

I stopped, my heart speeding up, knocking against the wall of my chest like a bass drum. “Liza, what are you doing?”

“Oh, don’t worry,” she said, waving the gun around, which had the exact opposite effect. It actually made me worry very much. “I’m not going to kill you with this. I’m going to use poison. After all, that’s your
modus operandi,
and this whole thing has to be perfect, convincing, down to the last detail.”

“What thing?” My brain worked frantically, trying to remember what I’d done with my cell phone and how I could get to it once I figured it out. Escaping through the front door was no longer an option. She’d shoot me in the back, in spite of her fondness for poison.

She reached into her pocket again and retrieved a tiny vial of liquid. Poison, I assumed, and my heart beat even faster. Without commenting, she slipped it back in the pocket. Maybe she just wanted me to see it. Wanted me to think about what she was going to do to me.

“I only wanted to scare you away,” she said. “But you wouldn’t go. I’ve worked so hard.” She shook her head. “You know why Deanna hates you so much?” She didn’t wait for my response. “I told her that when you would come back to visit, even when I was engaged to Rick, you slept with him. That you did it while I was pregnant.”

“That’s a lie!”

“
That’s a lie
,” she mimicked in a nasal, little girl voice. “I also told her that her husband was sleeping with your mother.”

“
What?
”

She shrugged. “It wasn’t true, but Dave was a cheating piece of shit and most of the men in town wanted Audra. Even when your mother got older, she never lost her looks. It was easy to convince Deanna there was something going on between Dave and Audra. She couldn’t keep hating Audra after she was murdered, so she turned that hate on you. With Deanna’s position in Jessup, your crazy family, and Patrick’s antics, it didn’t take long for the whole town to feel the same way. Everyone in town hated you. Except me, of course. I was the long-suffering, kind-hearted, generous soul who loves everyone, no matter what.”

Stay calm,
I told myself. Stay calm and maybe
she’ll
stay calm. “Liza, we can work this out. Whatever you’ve done. Let’s just talk about this and work it out.”

“First, I need you to tell me what he said in the note,” she said.

“Who? What note?”

She sighed impatiently. “Don’t act stupid. I don’t have time for this. You know what I mean. Daniel’s suicide note. The one you’re going to write, in addition to confessing to the recent crime spree, needs to say something similar to his note so they’ll think it’s authentic. So they’ll believe you really wrote it, which you will, but they need to think you wrote it of your own accord, which I’m fairly certain you won’t. What Daniel wrote is not widely known, so when they see the same thing in yours, they’ll be convinced.”

“Since it’s not widely known, they won’t realize my note said the same thing.”

She clenched her jaw, speaking through gritted teeth. “You’re really trying my patience. We both know they’ll learn what the note said in the course of the investigation. If nothing else, Carmen knows. She’ll see the similarities.”

“Look, if this is because of Rick, you don’t have to do this. We’re not together, we never will be.”

Her face scrunched into something ugly and not quite sane. “Maybe not, but you took him from me. I was pregnant with his child, and you took him. We were going to be married, but his stupid bitch of a mother wanted to plan a ‘real’ wedding, wanted to take our time with it. Then I miscarried and Rick no longer wanted to marry me. He was only going to in the first place because it was the
honorable
thing.” She spat the word as if honor were something vile.

My cell phone rang. The sound came from the kitchen.
That’s
where I’d left it. On the counter.

“Don’t move,” she commanded, although I wasn’t aware that I had.

“If I don’t answer, whoever is calling might decide to come out here.”

She mentally debated that for only a moment before nodding. “Go get it. I’ll be right behind you, so don’t try anything stupid.”

She followed me into the kitchen, and I picked up my phone. The missed call showed to be from Hutch. Funny how earlier I’d feared being arrested for a crime I didn’t commit, and now it was the preferred choice in two very disastrous predicaments.