Tell Me You're Sorry (15 page)

Biting her lip, Stephanie listened to his voice become shakier. She could tell he was crying.

“Listen, I need to hang up now,” he murmured.

“Please, just one more thing,” she said. “My brother-in-law's name was Scott Hamner. Did—”

“I know. I told you, I read the article,” he said impatiently.

“Does that name sound familiar at all? Do you think your father could have known him—maybe in high school? Scott Hamner or another man, Dick Ingalls—could you run those names past your grandmother? Dick Ingalls is dead, too. He and his family were killed in a house fire. If there's a chance they knew your dad—”

“I'm sorry,” he interrupted. “I really don't want to have this discussion anymore. I thought I owed you a call at least. But I'm done talking with you. If I seem rude, it's because I buried my father along with my kid sister and brother this morning. Understand? So please, just leave me alone, okay?”

“Ryan, I'm sorry—”

She heard a click on the other end of the line.

“Shit,” Stephanie muttered, switching off the phone. Tears came to her eyes. She couldn't blame Ryan Farrell for hanging up on her. In her desperation, she'd become pushy and tactless with the poor kid.

She stared out her window at the traffic on the Tri-State below.

It was eight o'clock on a Saturday night. She was alone in another hotel room, feeling connected to absolutely no one.

 

 

The Philadelphia Story
on Turner Classic Movies and a room-service chicken Caesar with a half carafe of Cabernet didn't quite lift Stephanie from her doldrums, but the combination made things more bearable for an hour.

Scott's mother wanted her to stop “picking at the scab,” but she couldn't. What had happened to Rebecca and her family was on Stephanie's mind constantly. Of course, it didn't help that she was alone so much. Some nights on the road, a good movie on TV was her only distraction.

Around 9:15, she heard someone take away the room service tray outside her door. Stephanie was only halfway through the Cabernet—and the film. She was struggling to stay awake in the comfy easy chair. Her eyes kept fluttering.

The hotel room telephone rang, startling her.

Jumping to her feet, she snatched up the phone on the second ring. “Hello?”

“Hello, Ms. Coburn,” said the man on the other end. “This is Jason at the front desk. I'm sorry to disturb you. The room below yours seems to have a leak in the bathroom, and we're sending a maintenance man up to double-check that it's not coming from your toilet tank.”

“Now?” she asked.

“Yes. We're very sorry for the inconvenience. Please accept our apologies. I'm leaving a voucher for you here at the front desk for a free breakfast in our café tomorrow morning.”

“Well, that's not necessary, but thanks.”

“If we end up having to move you to another room, we'll upgrade you to a suite. The maintenance man will be there shortly. Thanks so much for your cooperation.”

“That's all right,” she said.

After she hung up, Stephanie glanced in the mirror above the dresser. She looked like a slob in her black cardigan, T-shirt, and sweats. But she didn't see any point in changing unless she had to switch rooms.

Smoothing back her hair, she stepped into the bathroom and switched on the light. She stared down at the floor by the toilet. It looked dry. The tank wasn't making any noise. She hoped they wouldn't have to move her. The notion of having some fancy suite did nothing for her. This late at night, she just wanted to wind down and go to bed.

She buttoned up her cardigan and wandered back to the room. With the remote, she turned down the volume on the movie.

Even though she was expecting it, the knock on her door still made her jump. She knew it was the maintenance man, but checked the peephole out of habit. On the other side of the door, the wiry man in the blue workman's uniform was glancing over his shoulder—at the hallway. The glass in the spy-hole distorted everything slightly.

Stephanie reached for the door handle, but hesitated. She checked the peephole again. Now the man was looking over his other shoulder.

Stephanie instinctively stepped back from the door. All she could think was that he seemed to be making sure no one else was in the hallway. She hadn't been able to see if he was wearing a tool belt or carrying a bag.

He knocked again. “Maintenance!” he called.

The door handle rattled.

Stephanie backed away toward the bed and grabbed the phone. “Just a minute!” she answered in a shaky voice. She dialed the front desk, and anxiously counted three ringtones.

“Front desk,” the woman answered.

“This is Stephanie Coburn in room 216,” she whispered into the phone. She cupped her hand over her mouth and the receiver. “Did someone there just call me—someone named Jason—about sending up a maintenance man?”

There was silence on the other end of the line.

“Hello?” she said under her breath. “Are you still there?”

“Yes, Ms. Coburn. Ah, we don't have anyone named Jason working the front desk—”

“Then someone's trying to break into my room,” she said, cutting her off. “He's outside my door right now, dressed as a maintenance man.”

There was no response.

“Hello?” Stephanie said again.

“Keep your door locked,” the woman told her. “Don't answer it. I'm sending our security man up there right now. I want you to stay on the line with me.”

“I'm not going anywhere,” Stephanie murmured, staring at the security latch on the door. She'd set it in place earlier. That was another thing she did out of habit during her hotel stays. Right now, the latch seemed to be moving ever so slightly—as if someone were putting pressure against the door. The handle kept twitching.

“Stephanie?” the desk clerk said. “Stephanie, our security man, Dave Marsh, is on his way up. Don't open the door for anybody but him.”

Standing by the bed, Stephanie kept telling herself to breathe. “What's your name?” she whispered into the phone.

“Lynne Davis,” the woman answered.

“Thank you for your help, Lynne,” she said, her eyes still riveted to the door. The handle was perfectly still now.

All at once, he pounded on the door.

Recoiling, Stephanie almost dropped the phone.

“Ms. Coburn? This is Dave Marsh with security. Are you all right?”

“It's your security man,” she said into the phone. “I'm going to set you down for a second . . .” She put the receiver on the bed, and then went to check the peephole.

On the other side of the door stood a stocky, fifty-something man. He wore a blue suit. He had a cell phone to his ear, and in his other hand, he held up an ID card for her to see.

Stephanie unfastened the security latch and opened the door. “I'm okay,” she said. Her heart was still racing. “Did you see him?”

Stashing the ID badge back inside his suit coat, the security man shook his head. “He must have taken off,” he said. For a moment, Stephanie couldn't tell if he was talking to her or to someone on the phone. But he was looking right at her. He seemed like he was out of breath. “This guy won't get out of here without us seeing him,” he continued. “We have cameras by all the exits. I'll check the stairwells and the other wing. You said he was dressed like a maintenance man?”

Stephanie nodded. “He had on a blue uniform. He was short, slight build, with—with thinning dark hair.”

“All right,” the man said. “Please, stay in your room with the door bolted.”

She nodded and let out a skittish laugh, “Yes, of course, gladly.”

She did as she was told, then got back on the phone with the desk clerk, Lynne. She thanked her again.

They didn't find the bogus maintenance man. The police were called, and Stephanie ended up having to file a report. She talked to two uniformed cops for a half hour. One of them kept glancing over at her half-carafe of wine. For a while, Stephanie wondered if they doubted her story or thought she was drunk. But the hotel operator had a record of someone calling Stephanie's room from inside the hotel at 9:17.

What worried Stephanie most was that this “Jason” who claimed to be at the front desk had addressed her by name. This hadn't been anything random. Someone had deliberately targeted her.

The hotel moved her into a different room. Unlike what “Jason” had promised, it wasn't an upgrade. The room was one floor up and in a different wing. But it was an exact duplicate of the room she'd vacated. It had the same furniture. The bed was the same, too.

And in it, she didn't sleep a wink that night.

C
HAPTER
T
EN

 

“O
h, crap,” groaned 16-year-old Alison Metcalf. Sitting with her friend at a picnic table by the high school's parking lot, she'd just pulled something from her lunch bag. Now she was grimacing at it. “I grabbed the wrong bag. I got my brother's lunch. Gag me, Lunchables . . .”

It dawned on Alison that her poor 9-year-old brother, Danny, had it far worse off, stuck with her carrot sticks, low-cal yogurt dip, and a Special K bar. She was always dieting, even though her parents insisted she was too skinny. With blue eyes and corkscrew-curly, shoulder-length tawny brown hair, she knew she was pretty. But she wished her breasts were bigger, and she didn't like her long neck. And the occasional pimple made her feel utterly hideous.

“I'll take your applesauce if you don't want it,” said her best friend, Cate. She had a perfect, milky complexion, bobbed jet black hair, a stud in her right nostril, and a killer body.

“No way,” Alison replied. “The applesauce is the only thing in here I'll touch. But you're welcome to build your own cal fest with my processed ham discs, lardy Ritz crackers, and petroleum-based cheese-food-product slices. I'm sure they spell it C-H-E-Z-E for legal reasons . . .” She spoke a bit louder than normal, just in case the cool group at the neighboring picnic table had noticed her. Some of the girls among them were nice, but others were total bitches. For them, Alison hoped to come off as clever and sophisticated about the dorky packet of Lunchables in her bag.

She and Cate had a strategic spot for watching Shane Camper, George White, and their pals executing all sorts of awesome moves on their skateboards. Alison had had a little crush on Shane ever since the pouty-lipped, blond-haired dreamboat offered her a stick of Trident in the hallway between classes two weeks ago. He'd already smiled at her twice while zooming by on his skateboard.

The sky was gray, and it looked like rain, but Alison would be damned if she went inside now. She planned to stay out here as long as Shane did.

“Hey, isn't that your mom?” she heard Cate ask.

Alison glanced over toward the street, and was horrified to spot her mother in the family car, a 1972 Oldsmobile Vista Cruiser, tan with fake wood paneling. Alison's dad loved tacky old cars, and claimed this one was in “pristine condition.” He'd fixed the interior to include a new sound system, GPS, and all the updates. Alison's mother drove the old heap around for everything—much to Alison's chagrin. She wondered why her parents couldn't be normal.

The car was idling, just beyond where the guys skateboarded. Her mother poked her blond head out the car window and squinted toward the school.

“What do you think she wants?” Cate asked.

Alison's first thought was that her mother had discovered the lunch bag snafu and come by to switch lunches back. She imagined her mother getting out of the car, trotting around Shane and George's crew on their boards, and then delivering her lunch to her—in front of God and everyone. If that happened, Alison figured she'd have to change her name and switch schools.

Shoving the Lunchables package back into the lunch bag, Alison got to her feet. On her way to the Vista Cruiser, she dodged the skateboarders and felt her face turning red. It dawned on her that maybe something serious had happened—either to Danny at school or their dad at the TV station, where he was the anchorman on the local five, six, and eleven o'clock news.

As she approached the car, Alison saw her mother wave and even smile a bit. So much for coming about a family emergency. Wide-eyed, Alison stared at her. “What's going on?” she asked.

Her mother looked up at her through the open window. “I'm sorry, honey. I didn't mean to cramp your style. I was hoping no one would see me . . .”

“
Everyone
can see you.” Alison whispered. She had a hand on the Vista Cruiser's windowed roof. “What are you doing here?”

Her mom shrugged. “I just wanted to make sure you were okay . . .”

“Well, I was until you showed up!” Alison said. “Why? What's going on? Was there something on the news, another school shooting?”

Her mother shook her head. “No, I just had a feeling something was wrong, a premonition. So—well, I started worrying, and I decided to check on you
. . .”

“God, Mom, are you insane? Everyone can see us. What am I supposed to tell people? You came here because you had a
premonition
? This is so humiliating!” Alison figured she'd have to make up some story about a relative dying to explain why her mother had dropped by school.

“I was just concerned about you, that's all,” her mother sighed. “You want humiliation? I can always get out of this car, put my cardigan on your shoulders and give you a sloppy kiss on the cheek. How would you like that?”

“Huh, you might as well,” Alison shot back. “I couldn't be more embarrassed. Is that all? Can I go back to my friends now?”

“Go ahead.” Her mother smiled wistfully. “And I'm sorry I humiliated you.”

Alison rolled her eyes. “Yeah, right. It's like that's your job lately.” She swiveled around, and flounced back toward the picnic table—staying out of the way of the skateboarders. She didn't look over her shoulder, and prayed her mother was quietly driving away.

“What was that about?” Cate asked.

Alison tossed the lunch bag in the garbage. “Oh, my mother is a psycho, that's all,” she muttered, plopping down beside her friend. She looked past the guys on the skateboards, and noticed the clunky Vista Cruiser wasn't there on the street anymore.

She felt relieved.

 

 

“Anyway, don't be surprised if our daughter won't talk to me for the next week,” Dina Metcalf said, while watching the road ahead. It was raining lightly, and she had the wipers on low. Beside her on the passenger floor were three grocery bags and two twelve-packs of Diet Coke.

“How did you know where she'd be having lunch?” her husband, Mark, asked over the speakerphone.

“Oh, she's gaga for that skateboarder kid, Shane,” Dina said. “So I just looked for where those idiots congregate on their skateboards—and there she was. I only wanted to check to make sure she was okay. I was hoping she wouldn't see me . . .”

“Well, Danny's okay, I'm okay, and Alison's okay, though psychologically scarred for life. Are you satisfied now?”

“Sure, I guess,” Dina lied.

“I should scoot,” Mark said. “On the show tonight, I'm wearing the striped tie you gave me. Love you, hon.”

“I love you, sweetie,” she said. She reached over and switched off the speakerphone.

No one else took her premonitions very seriously. But she'd awoken this morning with an awful sensation that her family was in danger. Dina couldn't ignore it. Something like this had happened years ago, shortly after she'd gotten married. She'd been on a plane, coming back from a business trip, and an inexplicable, deep anguish had overcome her. She had no idea what it was about, but she retreated into the coach cabin's restroom and burst into tears. She stayed in there sobbing for so long that the flight attendant had knocked on the door, asking if she was okay. Once the plane had landed, she immediately phoned Mark to ask if he was all right. He told her he was fine. By the time she'd gotten home, they received the news that her father had keeled over dead from a heart attack.

Not every premonition was so catastrophic, or accurate. But her track record was good enough that Dina trusted her gut instincts. She was only half-satisfied after checking in on Mark and the kids just now. She knew the clenched feeling in her stomach wouldn't go away until late into the night—when everyone else in the house was asleep and this day was over.

She turned onto their block, which wound through some woods down to the shoreline in West Seattle. Their house, which Mark described as a Frank Lloyd Wright wannabe, was partially on stilts. It looked over the treetops at Puget Sound and Vashon Island. Pulling into the driveway, Dina reached for the device on the car's sun visor and pressed the button to open the garage door.

She maneuvered the car inside. It was a two-car garage, but crammed with so many garden tools and boxes of junk that they only had room for the Vista Cruiser. Mark parked his 1968 Mustang in a little bay to the right of the driveway.

The garage door groaned with a mechanical hum as it made its descent. Dina stepped out of the car and squeezed through the narrow clearance between the front bumper and the garage wall. She reached for the passenger door, but instantly froze when she heard something behind her. It was a strange, scraping noise.

Danny had said last week that he'd seen a rat in the garage—or “maybe a really big mouse.” They'd set out a few traps, but hadn't caught anything yet. Still, ever since Danny's alleged rat sighting, Dina had been a bit leery whenever she set foot in the garage.

She swiveled around and warily gazed down around the cement floor. Some of the storage boxes were stacked up to six feet tall. They cast heavy shadows on the floor and garage walls. Dina peered down at the dark crevices between the boxes. If she saw a rodent, she'd probably bolt into the house, and leave the groceries in the car. She looked toward the last stack of boxes over by the big garage door. Her eyes were still downcast—so before anything else, she saw the man's feet.

Dina gasped and glanced up.

Staring back at her was a scrawny-looking stranger with thin, brown hair. He wore a dark shirt and black slacks. He had a gun in one hand and a bottle of bourbon in the other. With a tiny smirk, he raised the bottle. “Why don't you have a drink?” he asked.

“Do what he says, Dina,” she heard a woman say—from another part of the garage.

Just as Dina looked over toward her, the ceiling light shut off automatically. All at once, they were swallowed up in darkness. A dim light still filtered through the garage window, so Dina could see the woman in silhouette. She emerged from the shadowy alcove by the family's second refrigerator.

Dina almost forgot about the keys in her trembling hand—and the button for the car alarm. She pressed it.

The shrill, earsplitting siren reverberated within the garage walls. Dina ran toward the door to the house—and the switch to the automatic door. But, suddenly, the man grabbed her from behind.

“Don't rough her up!” the woman yelled over the noise.

Dina screamed and screamed until he clasped his hand over her mouth. She struggled, but he was too strong for her. He managed to pry the car keys from her hand. Then he turned off the car alarm.

In the abrupt silence, Dina heard the bourbon bottle rolling on the cement floor. And she heard him gasping as his arms imprisoned her. She felt his warm breath against the back of her neck. He smelled of stale cigarettes. One hand pulled back for just a moment. Then she sensed the gun moving up her back—until the muzzle was tangled in her hair. The cold steel barrel tickled her below the ear.

He turned her around so that she was facing the big garage door—and his accomplice. The woman had moved from near the front of the car around the back fender to where her partner had been hiding. She had long, auburn hair and wore a dark gray trench coat. Her face was still in the shadows.

The bourbon bottle was now in the woman's grasp. “Do what he says, Dina,” she whispered. “Have a drink, have a few drinks . . .”

Slowly he took his hand away from Dina's mouth. “What—do you want?” she asked. She could hardly get the words out. Her whole body was shaking.

“I just want to make this as easy as possible for you,” the woman said. “It's not your fault that you're married to a son of a bitch. I have no quarrel with you. In fact, don't worry about your groceries. I'll take them into the house. I need to get a feel for the layout anyway. Now, c'mon, do as the man says. There's no use in struggling or screaming. Just relax, and have a drink or two. It'll make the whole thing painless. Like I say, I'm trying to help you.”

She opened up the bourbon bottle, and held it up for a moment—as if toasting her. “We girls have to stick together . . .”

 

 

Alison frowned at the two twelve-packs of Diet Coke on the counter.

Setting her backpack on one of the kitchen bar stools, she wondered what her mother was up to now. The big cartons of soft drinks always went into the garage refrigerator—and then got moved into the kitchen fridge three or four cans at a time. Why the hell had her mother lugged them into the house? Alison was the only one who drank Diet Coke. Was her mother making some kind of statement?

She could hear the TV down in the family room. Danny was watching cartoons. She didn't hear anything else.

“Mom?” she called. “Mom, are you home?” She wondered if her mother would even bother answering. Alison realized she'd been pretty much of a pill when her mother had come by school today.

She headed downstairs to the family room. There was a fireplace, a minibar, and a big-screen TV. Hanging from the wall was a giant poster from the racing movie
Grand Prix
, with James Garner. It was her dad's favorite movie. Danny sat on the sectional sofa, watching some outer space cartoon and wolfing down a bowl of Trix. He was skinny with a cute face and a wavy mop of pale blond hair. He had his stocking feet up on the coffee table, near the cereal box. Behind him was a picture window with a panoramic view of the trees.