Rancor: Sinister Attachments, Book 1 (12 page)

“Why were you looking at my stuff?”

Maggie could not tell if Jess was angry or just putting on a show. “I’m sorry. I left my pendant here and I was just looking for it. I thought maybe if you found it you may have put it in there for safe keeping.” Not a bad lie, she thought.

“I haven’t seen a pendant. What does it look like?”

Gosh, now I have to expand my lie. “It looks like a butterfly.”

Jess shook her head and walked into the kitchen, taking a can of beer from the fridge. “Do you want one?”

“No, I have to get back to the apartment.”

Jess snapped the can tab open, walked into the living room, and sat on the lumpy sofa, propping her feet on the coffee table. “I’ll call you if I find the pendant.”

Maggie was feeling bad. Jess was not acting like a guilty person. She sat in the stained brown velvet chair across from Jess. How was she going to ask questions without sounding accusative? “I just came from the house and it looked like someone has been there since we were there. Did you go back to the house for some reason?”

Jess shook her head. “Not me.”

“You, know . . . I was going through more of Cory’s papers and found one that said you worked for him as an associate accountant. Is that true?”

Jess took another swallow of beer. “Yeah, he hired me to do basic filing and data entry, nothing that has much to do with being an accountant.”

“I didn’t know, why didn’t you tell me?”

“I thought you knew; I thought Cory told you. Besides, I didn’t work much, only a night or two a week. It was just to supplement my income from Flashers.”

Okay, she is making sense. Should she ask about the Swiss Chalet and St. Valentine’s Day? If she did not, she would be mad at herself for not getting answers to those questions. “I also saw something about the Swiss Chalet.” She studied Jess’s expression, but she did not detect a look of guilt. At least so far.

“Oh, that,” Jess said, glancing toward the ceiling. “He was busy and wanted me to help him by getting you a bouquet from the flower shop next door. We met in the parking lot of the Swiss Chalet because it was bigger than the little one the flower shop had. Did you get the flowers?”

Maggie arrived home the next evening, and there was indeed a bouquet on the dining room table for her. It was a beautiful arrangement of red roses, tulips, and frilly white baby’s breath. “Why did you meet in the parking lot? Why not just bring the flowers back to the house?”

“I was not going back to the house, I was staying in town for a while, and Cory was driving through, so we just met up.”

Jess seemed calm and assured. Had she practiced the answers and already prepared for Maggie’s inevitable questions? Maggie wanted to mention the missing jewelry and coin but did not want Jess hiding anything more than what she already had. “I talked to the lawyer today.”

Jess flinched and took a double swallow. “Oh, yeah? What did he have to say?”

“He said that Cory gave Jessica Jane Pinter his grandma’s jewelry and coin.” Maggie did not take her eyes off Jess.

“He did?” Jessica smiled and leaned forward. “You’re kidding?”

“You didn’t know about that?” Maggie noticed that Jess seemed surprised. Maybe the surprise came from her realizing that her blackmailing actually worked.

“No, I didn’t.” Jess finished the can of beer and walked into the kitchen to get another.

“Why would he give you his grandma’s things and not me? Any idea?” Maggie did not like the way that Jess seemed preoccupied with her newfound wealth rather than wondering why Maggie, Cory’s wife, had not inherited them.

“I don’t know.” Jess sat back down. “But the two of you have not been getting along. Sometimes when he’s working late and you’re gone on business, he tells me things.”

Maggie was shocked. Jess had to have noticed her reaction. “What things?”

“I don’t know if I should say.”

“He’s dead, you can say.” Maggie wanted the answer.

“He said you’re gone a lot and he gets lonely, and that when you’re home you’re either busy writing or too tired for anything and then you go to straight to bed . . . to go to sleep.”

The tide was turning. By what Jess was saying, she was leading up to the affair. However, Maggie had no idea anything was wrong with her and Cory’s relationship. “Please, explain further, Jess. Just say it.”

Jess leaned back and smiled. “Well, he and I have always gotten along, and quite frankly I have always been attracted to him.” She looked at Maggie. “I don’t believe you knew that he was attracted to me. Did you?”

Maggie sat speechless.

“I didn’t think so. But now that he’s dead, like you said, I might as well say it because I think you do know now.” Jess leaned back and gazed out the window as if she were dreaming. “One night I stopped by the house to see you, but you were gone on business, some book signing or something, but Cory was home. He invited me in and we had a few drinks. Actually, more than a few drinks. And what can I say, one thing led to another and we . . .” Jess looked at Maggie. “Do you want me to continue?”

Maggie got the picture. Jess was a traitor friend and Cory was a cheat. She nodded.

“Well, I won’t give you all the details, but I will tell you that we made love. Actually, since I’m coming clean, we made love many times. I’m surprised you never picked up on it. By the look you’re giving me, I can tell you did not know he was planning on divorcing you. He was taking a long time to tell you though. I guess he felt sorry for you.”

This was one more blow to her senses. Jess had reached into her chest and pulled out Maggie’s heart. She did not cry, she was too numb. But one more thing was bothering her—the suicide. She kept her cool and asked, “Do you know anything about the suicide? Why would Cory commit suicide?”

Jess raised her eyebrows in thought. “I don’t know. I think he was torn between us and couldn’t take it anymore.”

Even though Maggie was numb, it did not dull her suspicion of Jess. If Jess could have an affair with Cory behind her back, maybe she knew more about Cory’s death than she was saying, so decided to lie. “The police told me they think someone murdered Cory, that it wasn’t suicide.”

Jess had a change of state. “What?”

Maggie smiled inside, but not really. Jess may have had something to do with Cory’s death, but that was absurd. Jess is not capable of murder. Maybe she hired someone. “I don’t know any more than that.”

Jess’s calm demeanor returned. “Are you a suspect?”

What? How had Jess turned this around? Had she done something to make Maggie look suspicious? But, first of all, the police saying it could be murder was a lie. Was it true? Maybe Jess was capable of more evil than Maggie had imagined. She stood up. “I think I need to get back home.”

Jess did not say anything until Maggie was closing the door.

“Have you seen a psychiatrist lately, Maggie?”

What the hell, was everyone insane?

TWENTY-FOUR

The sun had dropped below the horizon by the time Maggie drove down the long road to Sandpiper Bluff Apartments. What once seemed like the perfect place to live, was now foreboding. The instant the building came into view, Maggie felt it looked more like the Lake Shore Sanatorium and Psychiatric Hospital from her nightmares, rather than the home of her dreams. It was now a place she did not want to be, let alone go inside and live.

Maggie parked and looked at her reflection in the car’s rear-view mirror. Her red and puffy eyes made it clear she had been crying, so she looked inside her purse for the sunglasses she had borrowed from Jess. She could not find them so she got out of the car and walked into the building, hoping she would not see anyone. 

When she entered the lobby she looked over at Mr. Zimmerman’s office, he still was not there. She continued up the stairs and was almost to her room when Bruce walked out of his apartment.

“Hi, Maggie,” he said. He studied her face. “Are you okay?”

Maggie looked away from him and walked up to her door, putting the key in the lock. Then she thought she would ask him about what Debbie was accusing her of. She turned toward Bruce. “I talked to Debbie yesterday, and she was saying things about me that weren’t true.”

Bruce walked up to Maggie as if entertained. “Like what?”

Maggie cleared her throat. “Remember when we had dinner Tuesday night?”

“Sure, how could I forget?” He smiled, looked at her chest, and then back up to her eyes.

Maggie looked away. “Well, Debbie was saying that you and I . . . I mean, you remember me leaving after supper, right?”

Bruce continued to smile while he crossed his arms and leaned against the wall next to Maggie’s door. “Sure, I remember you leaving after dinner, but not right after dinner.”

Maggie looked at him and then looked away when he winked at her. “What do you mean not right after dinner?”

“You don’t remember, do you?” Bruce laughed. “That doesn’t surprise me since you were getting heavy into the booze.” He paused. “I’m taking it that you don’t remember that you and I had a little hanky-panky.” He moved close to her. “Debbie was frost when you and I went into the bedroom to get it on.” He touched the side of her cheek. “You were a little rough with Susie. The little brat had it coming, though, but you surprised me when you tied her to the bed . . . And then you tied me to . . .”

Maggie pushed his hand away. “You’re lying, just like Debbie. Why are the two of you making this stuff up?”

Bruce began walking toward the stairway. “I’m not making it up. You just don’t remember.”

Maggie hurried inside her apartment and closed the door. No way in hell did she do all that. Bruce and Debbie were doing this to her for a reason. But what reason? She had never done anything to them, she just moved into this hole for Christ’s sake.

She reached into her purse and took out the camera and its charger. She looked around the room, trying to find a place she could put it so that when Debbie or Bruce came into her apartment they would not notice it. The area was sparse of furnishings so she would need to create a hiding spot for it. There were no bookshelves with knickknacks or potted plants of ferns, so she decided to put it in the backpack so that the lens could see through the crack of the unzipped zipper.  The hiding spot also had the added advantage of looking like it belonged there if someone happened to see it.

Maggie pushed the kitchen’s dinette table a foot toward the dining room so that the camera would have a good view of the apartment door. After making sure there was plenty of drive space for any recordings, she plugged it in and made sure it was set to record automatically when it sensed motion in the living room and the front door.

Now what? Maggie said to herself as she looked around the disquieting apartment. She wanted to pack up and move out that very second, but she needed to collect evidence to show that the crazy neighbors were entering her apartment and framing her. For now, she would have to stay in 
Hell House
.

TWENTY-FIVE

Maggie woke up and sighed. It was Friday morning, and Nora Bella was expecting her to send the completed manuscript of Raven Ridge today. She was so far behind; there was no way she was going to get it done. When Nora calls, and she will, Maggie would just have to ask her for an extension. Nora will not be happy, but there was no other option.

She lay on her side staring at the poorly painted plaster wall. Fortunately, she did not have a nightmare last night. No dream of Nurse Deborah and Dr. Bruce Hancock, and no image of the psychiatric patient, Susan, bond barbarically to a hospital bed, and lying there dead. Then she realized that her bed, the bed she was sleeping in, was in the same location as Susie’s—well, Susie’s in the dream. The bed she was sleeping in looked like a hospital bed. It was small in size and had old tubular head and foot boards, but there were no side rails or a way to raise and lower the head of the bed. However, she did notice an unusual crease that ran across the center of the mattress as if someone had folded it in half. She ran her hand along the bottom sheet feeling the groove. Then she jumped out of bed and stared at it. She brought a hand to her mouth and whispered, “Or the mattress could be creased from the head of the bed having been raised and repeatedly lowered, just like a hospital bed.”

There was one way to find out. She took the cell phone from the nightstand, turned on its light, and got down on her hands and knees to look under the bed. There were holes in the scratched metal frame, just like ones that are used to tie restraints, and the frame was split so that the head and foot of the bed could be elevated. She went to the foot and noticed a mechanism that could have once held two hand cranks for making manual adjustments.

“No frickin’ way!” she said, pushing the mattress off the bed. Through the frame, she could see the old inner workings of the hospital bed. “I’ve been sleeping in a hospital bed? I can’t believe it.”

Maggie went into the spare room and pushed the mattress to the side; the bed was the same as hers. She was horrified. “They have to be beds from when this place was a hospital. This is ridiculous; I’m not sleeping in that bed again.”

She walked into the living room and stood there. The bed she had been sleeping in must have been one from the building’s days as a psychiatric hospital. It had worn brown paint around the restraint holes in the bed frame, likely from frequent use. “This place is disgusting.”

While she made coffee, she thought about how a place with a warbler singing outside the window and a view of blue water and sky, could be so dark and freakish. Even the air inside the building was growing increasingly heavy, like walking through a film of some unseen substance.

She sneaked a cup of coffee as it dripped into the pot and took the camcorder from its hiding spot. Just as expected, the only recording was herself when she had set it and walked to her bedroom, and when she woke up and went into the living room. But to get the recording she needed, she would have to leave the apartment and give Debbie a chance to come in and do whatever she is going to do. For the first time since Cory’s death, going back to the house and sleeping in their bed sounded comforting.