Lizzy Gardner #2_Dead Weight (10 page)

But there was nothing.

It took Vivian over an hour to go through every drawer in the same manner only to come up empty-handed.

Depressed and severely hungry, she made her way to the pantry where all the goodies were kept. Boxes and boxes of cookie and cake mixes. Melbourne said he left fattening foods here because in real life there were always endless temptations.

No shit. Tell me something I don’t know, asshole.

She didn’t know whether to make blueberry muf ins today or gingerbread cookies. She grabbed both boxes and then made her way back to the kitchen. The bowl she’d used the other day to make an angel food cake was still in the sink. So were the mixing utensils.

Outside the window, the female deer seemed frantic, pacing around the fawn.
What was wrong? What happened to happy and peaceful?

Vivian’s heart dropped to her stomach when she saw the cause of the female deer’s frustration. The fawn had managed to get its head caught between two fallen trees that had left just enough room for the fawn to stick its head in and trap itself. The further the fawn struggled, the more obvious it became that the poor thing might break its neck.

Vivian reached toward the window pane but stopped herself from knocking. Doing so would only scare the fawn further. The female deer stopped pacing and began to lick the fawn instead. The young deer relaxed enough to pull its head free.

Thank goodness!

Vivian watched mother and baby run off and disappear through Ponderosa pine and Douglas fir.

Her heart was beating triple-time again.
What if she injured herself or
had a heart attack? What would she do then?
She had been so focused on inding Diane that nothing else had mattered. She’d put down a huge deposit of ive thousand dollars to come here. She worked for herself doing random editing jobs from her apartment, she was a saver, but there was no way she was going to pay the remainder of the money she owed. Melbourne wanted ifteen thousand dollars. He was crazy.

Hoping to calm herself, Vivian read the back of the cake box.

Ingredients needed: 1/4 cup of oil and 3/4 cup of water.

She found herself gazing out the window again, focusing on the tiny space between the trees where the fawn’s head had gotten stuck. Her gaze dropped to the metal cuff around her ankle.

An idea struck her.

The cuff wasn’t as tight as it used to be.

That was the answer to her problems.

This morning she had noticed that the fur-lined metal cuff hadn’t felt as tight around her ankle. She’d also noticed it while she was sawing with the knife. She had definitely lost weight.

But how? And if so, how much?

She’d been eating cakes and cookies nearly every day, ignoring the stockpile of frozen fruits and vegetables in the freezer. She dropped the muf in mix into the sink and ran to the bathroom, the chain clanking against the wood loor as she went. She jumped on the scale and watched the numbers go up and down, playing with her psyche, before finally holding steady at 263 pounds.

No way. She stepped off the scale and then back on.

There it was again. 263 pounds. Minus the ten pounds for the metal chain, bringing her weight to 253 pounds.

She had lost 47 pounds.

No frickin’ way.

She’d been on every diet in the world and hadn’t lost that much weight.

Jiggling her arm again, she had a tough time believing she’d lost that much weight. She’d been eating cookies, but she hadn’t been eating as much food as she usually did. At home she ate lots of homemade bread, candy, and popcorn drenched in butter. She’d also been sleeping. .a lot.

Exiting the bathroom, she took a seat on the edge of the bed and stuck two ingers between her ankle and the cuff. She used to only be able to it one inger. She tried to pull her foot from the cuff. There was no way. Not even close. She needed to lose at least another inger in width, which meant another fifty pounds, at least.

She wanted out of here. And as far as she could tell, there was only one way out. Before she put too much thought into her plan and changed her mind, she moved quickly to the pantry and grabbed as many boxes of muffin and cakes mixes as she could carry.

Hurrying to the kitchen sink, she dropped the boxes on the counter and then turned the faucet full blast. She ripped open the irst box and dumped its contents down the drain. With robotic motions, she repeated the process. Rip box open, dump contents. Rip box open, dump contents.

It wasn’t long before she was down to the last box of cookie mix. She thought about saving it, just in case, but then she looked out the window to the spot where she’d seen the fawn escape.

She needed to stay calm. She needed to use her head.

For the irst time in her life, there was something she wanted more than cookies and cupcakes.

She wanted freedom.

Chapter 15

The Only Witness

“So,” Hayley asked Theodore Johnson again, “you’re absolutely certain that the girl you saw on the side of the road over twenty years ago was Carol Fullerton?”

He rubbed the back of his neck and said, “I’d bet my life on it.”

“Who was the guy she drove off with?”

“No idea.”

Jessica stood by the door, her arms crossed. She didn’t want to be inside Theodore Johnson’s house any more than she would want to be talking to her deadbeat father who had run off when his family needed him most.

But Hayley looked perfectly comfortable talking to a man who had done jail time for beating his girlfriend to a pulp. Johnson lived with his eighty-year old mother, who sat in the corner of the living area watching a game show. The volume was turned full blast, bells and whistles piercing Jessica’s eardrums every time a contestant answered correctly.

Jessica zeroed in on Hayley’s face, hoping Hayley would look her way so she could give her the let’s-get-out-of-here look.

No such luck.

Hayley was concentrating on Johnson’s every word. Hayley had a knack for this interviewing business. For starters, she had no fear.

Johnson could just as well be an escaped convict; it wouldn’t make any difference to Hayley.

In the past, Lizzy had hinted to Jessica about the repulsive things Hayley had been forced to endure throughout her young life. Lizzy liked to talk about how strong a person like Hayley would have to be to survive such unspeakable happenings and go on to live a normal life.

But Jessica was pretty sure nobody had ever taken a good long look at Hayley. If they watched her as she’d been watching Hayley for months now, they would see that she was far from well-adjusted. As far as Jessica was concerned, Hayley was a timed fuse grenade just waiting to explode.

Johnson, Jessica noticed, was beginning to look sort of bug-eyed, as if he needed his next ix before he got out of control. In the past thirty seconds, his hands had become idgety and a thick sheen of sweat gathered on his forehead.

“Come on, Mr. Johnson,” Hayley prodded. “I’m not a cop or a detective. Hell, I’m lucky if the lady I work for even pays me.”

Jessica inwardly smiled. Wasn’t that the truth?

“But I’m here today,” Hayley explained, “because Carol’s mother, Ruth Fullerton, is dying. Mrs. Fullerton needs to know what happened to her daughter. Do you get that?”

Hayley raised her arms in frustration and said, “Does anybody in this fucking world have compassion anymore?”

Johnson’s mom looked away from her television set to see what the raised voice was about, but the bells and whistles quickly drew her attention back to the screen.

“I don’t have any money, Mr. Johnson, but Jessica does. She’s one of those goody two-shoe types who save every penny and does everything right. She’s going to give you. . How much money do you have, Jessica?”

“Are you serious?”

“I’ll pay you back next week. How much money do you have on you?”

“I don’t know. Twenty dollars. That’s all I have.”

“Twenty dollars, Mr. Johnson. We’ll give you twenty dollars if you just tell us something. .anything.”

He raked his hands through his thinning grayish hair. “Do you have any idea what it’s like to be suspected of a crime you didn’t do?”

“No, I can’t say that I have any ideas about that,” Hayley answered. “I also have no idea how it would feel to be dying and not know what happened to my only child. It sucks, Mr. Johnson. I would have to guess that it would suck to have family and friends look at you, wondering if there might be the tiniest possibility that you killed a young girl and stashed her body somewhere along Interstate 5. I don’t think I would like that at all. In fact, I hate when people can’t stop for ten goddamn seconds and put themselves in someone else’s shoes. How hard is it to close your fucking eyes and imagine being that person? Of being accused of doing something you didn’t? No, I wouldn’t like it one bit.” Hayley let out a long sigh as she turned toward the door, ready to give up.

Thank God, Jessica thought.

“Burning Man,” he said under his breath.

Hayley turned back to face the man. “What did you say?”

Jessica uncrossed her arms and stared at him too, wondering if he could possibly have anything new to share about the Fullerton case.

“I saw a broken down car,” he said. “But I didn’t see anybody there.

Might have been ten or ifteen minutes later when I glanced in my rearview mirror and saw a girl sitting on the edge of the highway. By the time I found a turnaround and came back, she drove right by me.

She was sitting in the passenger seat of an old Buick.”

Jessica was holding her breath, waiting to see if he had more to add.

Hayley hadn’t moved either.

Thankfully, they didn’t have to wait long before he said, “I recognized the man driving the Buick.”

Jessica’s jaw dropped.

Hayley took a step back toward the man. “No shit.”

“No shit,” he repeated. “It was the same man who was in charge of Burning Man that year.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me? Do you have a name?”

He shook his head. “Once I became a prime suspect for trying to be a good citizen, I didn’t care about what I’d seen any longer. I didn’t tell them shit. The assholes had it all igured out before I could utter two words.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, me too.”

Hayley looked at Jessica. “Can you give him the twenty bucks now?”

Theodore swatted his hand through the air. “Keep your money. I’m getting too old for handouts.”

***

Lizzy sat in front of her computer in her bedroom and plugged in the mini portable hard drive. Right Click. Explore. Copy and Paste from external drive. Done.

The entire transfer took less than ifteen minutes. Many of the iles from Diane Kramer’s computer appeared to be form documents, Power Points used in the classroom, and an endless array of worksheets and student directories that included names, addresses and telephone numbers of the children Diane had taught over the years.

A few clicks of the keyboard brought Lizzy to report cards and saved emails from parents voicing concern and/or praise for Diane.

She read the word document iles titled Books to Get, Miscellaneous, and Medical. The next ile she found looked a little more interesting.

It was titled Things To Do. It was a short list: Dentist Appt. 2 PM

Friday, pick up prescription, join Weight Watchers, movie with Lori, work on progress reports, go to the gym.

The problem, Lizzy realized, was that the list had been created two years ago. She moved on, clicking ile after ile, skimming for now. She looked at the clock. It was almost seven thirty. Time lew when she was not having fun.

She had told Jessica she would be back at the of ice before dark.

Jessica was a responsible person. She would lock up and take Hayley home if Hayley needed a ride. Jessica had done as much before.

Lizzy glanced at her iPhone. No missed calls.

After she looked over a file, she deleted it. All of the files were still on the portable hard drive, so nothing would be permanently deleted.

She had no desire to look at each ile more than once. This simple yet time consuming process of elimination could take weeks if she didn’t stay focused.

At the sound of her doorbell, she wondered who it could be since she wasn’t expecting anyone. She pushed herself to her feet and limped to the door.

Linda Gates, her therapist, wanted Lizzy to get used to checking the door without getting her gun first.

Spiderman was dead, she reminded herself.

But some habits never died. She opened the top drawer of the Pembroke table near the front entrance. Her gun was right there. Her palms itched to pick it up, but she didn’t. Instead, she stared at it for a moment longer before forcing herself to look out the peephole.

She smiled.

Jared wore jeans and a dark T-shirt that showed off his nicely worked arms and toned body. That’s what happened when you went to the gym on a regular basis. Despite the great body, what really grabbed her attention was the picnic basket he was carrying.

Lizzy was down to two locks on her door, which was a far cry from the six deadbolts she used to have. She opened the door and smiled.

“When did you get back into town?”

She leaned forward and tried to lift the lid of the picnic basket, but Jared stopped her. “Not so fast. It’s a surprise.”

“Meww.”

She laughed. “What’s in there?”

“My new roommate,” he said. “Are you going to let us inside?”

Moving aside, she let him in and then locked the door behind her before joining him in the living room.

Jared set the basket in the middle of her living room loor and lipped open one side of the basket. The cutest little black and white kitten stared up at Lizzy with big adorable blue eyes.

Lizzy dropped down to the loor and sat cross-legged next to the basket, forgetting all about her sore muscles as she drew the kitten into her arms. “Aren’t you the cutest thing in the whole world,” she purred into the kitten’s soft fur.

“And what am I, chopped liver?”

“What’s her name?” she asked in a voice reserved for babies and kittens.