The Chesapeake Diaries Series (32 page)

“I do not like guns, but if Edmund Dent is in St. Dennis, I’m not going to argue.” She picked up Jackie Weston’s picture. “I feel real bad for her. I could be very wrong, but I didn’t get the sense that she was a bad person. I’m sorry she got involved with that family. They’re not nice people. That bad-news gene—and yes, the pun is intended—seems to run in the family. And I believe he’s been abusing her. All the signs were there.”

“I reviewed his criminal history. Their neighbors called the police several times to report screams and loud banging coming from their apartment, but she always insisted it was the television.”

“I knew it. She just has that defeated look about her.” Vanessa sighed. “If her fingerprints were in the database, she must have been arrested before, right?”

He nodded. “About six months ago, for passing bad checks.”

She looked back at the woman’s photo. “I can’t decide whether or not to be mad at myself for having been so nice to her.”

“If it makes you feel better, I don’t think she had anything to do with the break-in.”

“I hope not. There ought to be a law against men like that.”

“Well, there is, but unfortunately, too many women ignore it.”

“Some habits are very hard to break, Grady. Once you start believing that you deserve what you’re getting, it’s real hard to convince yourself otherwise. It took me a long time to realize that I could make it stop.”

“I’m surprised you ever took that kind of treatment from anyone. You are so strong, so self-assured.”

“It was hard-won, believe me.” She smiled. “Just something else I have to thank Hal for.”

“What do you mean?”

“If you’d seen me when I first arrived in St. Dennis …” She laughed ruefully. “Not just the way I looked, which was way inappropriate for anyone other than a teenager—I was just a mess all the way around. Looking back, it’s a miracle Hal even opened his door when he saw me standing on his front porch.”

She stopped and took a drink from the coffee Grace had brought her.

“I was scared to death that someone in Gene’s family would come looking for me—prophetic, huh? I couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat. Here I was, bunking in with strangers who had no real reason to take me in except the goodness of their hearts, and I sure wasn’t
used to people like that. I had no money, I couldn’t pay Hal room and board. I told him I’d get a job, but it was winter and there wasn’t much tourist action. Besides, there wasn’t much I was qualified to do. Long story short, Hal asked me what I would do if I could do anything, anything at all. I told him the only thing I ever dreamed of was owning a little dress shop, since the only job I ever had was in retail. He told me that if I did two things for him, he’d help me to have that little shop. One, I had to take classes at the community college—business classes, math, that sort of thing—and two, I had to go talk to a therapist. He promised me he’d never ask me what we talked about—and he never has, though I often volunteered. Anyway, I went to school and I did really well—surprised the hell out of me, how well I did—and I went to therapy every week for almost two years, which Hal paid for. It helped me to put a lot of things in perspective. Dr. Campbell—she was my therapist—helped me to understand that sometimes, you just have to let certain things go.”

She smiled up at him. “So yes, I am strong now. It took me a while, but I don’t let my past dictate what my future is going to be. That’s one of Dr. Campbell’s mantras, by the way.”

“Smart woman, your Dr. Campbell.”

She nodded. “Very.”

“You really have a lot to be proud of, you know that, right?”

“I got lucky, I had Hal and Beck and Dr. Campbell on my side.”

“I think you’re overlooking the fact that you must have had a lot inside you that you didn’t realize was
there. Friends and family and even professional therapists can’t give you what you don’t already have. They can only help you to find what you’ve got and tap into it.”

“That’s what Dr. Campbell always said. Were you in therapy, too?”

He shook his head. “Psych major.”

“I should have known.”

He laughed and looked around the shop. “Speaking of moving on, let’s finish this up so that you can reopen as soon as the glass is replaced.”

“The glass guy should be here soon.”

“Do you have a large trash container? I can get this broken glass up for you while you try to figure out what’s missing.”

“I already made a list for the insurance agent,” she told him. “He took the money and the dress that Candice—excuse me, Jackie—tried on. She must have been with him, for him to have known which one to take.”

“She could have just described it,” he replied. “I doubt he would have taken her with him on the break-in. There’d be less chance that he’d be seen coming and going if he was by himself.”

“Maybe. I hope you’re right, for her sake. If he’s arrested, he’ll go to prison, so maybe she can get away from him.” She paused on her way to get the trash container for the glass. “I’d like to think that could happen for her. I’d like to believe she’d get another chance to make things right for herself. She didn’t seem like someone who should be involved with someone like that.” She thought over what she’d just said, then laughed ruefully. “Then again, neither was I …”

Diary
—

Well, didn’t I say that Grady Shields was a nice young man? Apparently Vanessa thinks so, too. I noticed he hangs around Bling quite a bit, in a most protective manner, I might add. Which is only right, since our chief of police is away on a honeymoon with Grady’s sister—not that that obligates him, of course, but it is lovely that Grady is keeping an eye on Vanessa. But one cannot help but notice there’s nothing brotherly in the way that young man looks at her!

As for Vanessa, she’s come across some of Alice’s old herb books! Oh, yes, I’m dying to get my hands on them, since so much information has been lost to me since dear Alice passed, and let’s face it, my memory isn’t what it used to be. Blessings on Vanessa, she invited me to come to the house and look at those books—I will take her up on that as soon as I can without appearing overly anxious. I did inquire if she’d found any of Alice’s journals, but so far, she says she hasn’t seen them. I cannot even begin to imagine what she might think should she open any one of those and read about the activities that once took place in the very house she now calls home … and more shocking still, the names of those who participated!

Oh, dear—how would one explain …

—
Grace

Chapter 17

The woman stood in the doorway of the municipal building as if she wasn’t sure she wanted to go in. Hal noticed her when he crossed the hall from Beck’s office to the conference room, then when he came back out again and walked to the reception desk. He’d just opened his mouth to complain to Garland about having started three times to pick up his messages but had been distracted three times, when he realized why the woman looked familiar.

He walked toward her, half expecting her to turn and run back out through the double doors, but the closer he got to her, the more he realized that wasn’t likely to happen. She stood firm and watched him approach.

“I need to speak with the chief of police,” she said in a voice that was barely audible, as if she wasn’t sure she really wanted to be heard.

“I’m the chief,” he told her. “This week, anyway.”

“Something really bad is going to happen,” she said, her face as white as the T-shirt she wore. “You need to stop it. He’s going to hurt her.”

A chill went through him, but he never blinked.

“When?”

“Right now.”

“Where? At the shop?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know. All he said was that it was time, and we’d be leaving as soon as he took care of her.”

He took her arm and led her to the conference room.

“You’ve got to warn her,” the woman whispered. “He’s going to kill her.”

He did not have to ask who either
he
or
her
was. He turned the woman over to Gus and set off running up Kelly’s Point Road. It would be faster than getting the car and waiting for traffic to permit him to cross at Charles Street. As he ran, he dialed Vanessa’s cell.

When she answered, he said, “Is Grady with you?”

“Yes, he’s right here,” she told him. “Did you want—”

“Tell him to stand at the door and watch for me. I’ll be there in a minute.”

“Is something wrong?”

“Just tell him …” Hal hadn’t realized just how out of shape he was until he started to run up the hill to the main street. He had a mental picture of himself passing out in the middle of the street, but he made it to the shop without collapsing and was happy to see Grady in the doorway.

“Lock the door,” Hal panted. “We have a problem.”

“What? What’s wrong?” Vanessa cried. “Dear God, Hal, did you run all the way from the police station?”

He nodded, and she went into the back room and grabbed a bottle of water from the refrigerator.

“What the hell is going on?” Grady was asking when she came back to the front of the shop. She twisted the cap off the bottle and handed it to Hal.

“The woman—Jackie—just came into the station. Told me that something very bad was going to happen, like now. To Ness.” Hal paused to take a drink. “That Dent is planning on ‘taking care of her’ and then he and the woman were going to leave town.”

“She told you this?” Vanessa felt the blood drain from her face.

“Yeah.” Hal fought to get his breathing under control. “She doesn’t know what he has in mind, only that it’s going to be soon. As in now. This morning.”

“Well, he isn’t likely to be able to get past the two of you,” she noted warily.

“Is the back door locked?” Hal asked.

“It was earlier,” she replied.

“I’ll check it.” Grady walked to the back of the shop and tried the door. “It’s locked and dead-bolted,” he told them when he returned.

“So what do we do now?” Vanessa tried to keep the rising panic under control.

Hal rested his upper body on the counter. “I guess now we just have to wait to see what his next move is going to be.”

“Swell,” Vanessa muttered.

Maggie couldn’t remember the last time she felt this good. It seemed that ever since Carl had passed away, things had just gotten better and better for her. Oh, not that she was happy that he died. Far from it.
His death had saddened her greatly. Carl had been a really good man and he’d adored Maggie. While he was lacking in certain of his husbandly duties, he’d made up for it in other ways. He’d been her friend, and he’d provided very well for her. It was the first relationship Maggie had ever had with a man who’d demanded nothing more of her than her companionship. So she’d kept him company every day, and when his eyesight began to fail, she’d read the newspapers to him as well as the crime novels he loved so much. In return, Carl had given Maggie a lovely if somewhat isolated home and the first financial security she’d ever had. But lately, she was beginning to secretly think of Carl as her geriatric guardian angel.

She smiled to herself as she walked up Vanessa’s driveway with the bag from the plant nursery in her arms. Hal had said that Vanessa wanted water lilies and koi—well, then, water lilies and koi she would have. Maggie could hardly wait to see Vanessa’s face when she realized that her mother had single-handedly cleaned out the old pond and brought it back to life again. There’d been so few times in Vanessa’s life that Maggie had done something unexpected and just for fun. Well, this was the new Maggie. She was aware that her daughter was annoyed that she’d come to Beck’s wedding uninvited and that Vanessa had, well,
issues
with her. But she was going to do everything she could think of to win her daughter’s affection. She’d move heaven and earth, she told herself, why, she’d even—

Maggie rounded the corner of the house and went into the yard, and walked smack into a man who stood near the door leading down into the basement.
He was dark-haired, short and stocky, and had long sideburns, an unkempt mustache, and eyes like a ferret.

“Oh my God!” Maggie gasped when she recognized his face. The realization took her breath away. “You. It’s been
you …
”

She started to turn back to the driveway, her only thought being to run like hell, but he moved more quickly. In one stride, he had one arm around her waist and the other hand over her mouth. The bag slipped from her grasp and fell to the ground.

“Don’t make a sound,” he hissed in her ear. “Not one little peep. And stop struggling, damn it, or I will put a hole the size of Ohio through the back of your head right now.”

She froze.

“That’s better.” He began to move backward, dragging her along with him. “I’m going to turn you around, and you’re going to go down the steps ahead of me.”

He pointed to the basement, which loomed dark and deep before her eyes.

“No, no, please …” The thought of what might lie below in the dark terrified her, and the old movie mantra—
don’t go down into the basement
—rang in her ears. She pushed against him, and he laughed.

“You have a short memory, Mrs.… I can’t remember what your last name is, but it doesn’t much matter. I know who you are. I know that you helped that bitch after she put my man Eugene in that damned prison so he could die there. I know you took her out of town before any of us knew she was gone. So it’s going to give me a real thrill to do you, lady. An unexpected
pleasure, but it’s going to be a pleasure all the same. Now, walk down those steps, or I do it right here.” He pulled the gun from his waistband and held it to her forehead.

Maggie descended the steps, Edmund Dent at her back, his gun pressed hard between her shoulder blades. The air below was close and redolent of dried herbs. It was dark and twice she fell slightly forward, and twice more she tripped over something before the toe of her shoe struck the bottom step.

“Lift your foot and find the stair,” he told her.

She counted as she climbed, thirteen steps to the top. He reached around her and pushed open the door. Maggie blinked several times at the bright sunlight that flooded the kitchen. He led her across the room to the table and pushed her into the nearest chair. A length of rope lay coiled on the countertop, and she guessed that it had not been placed there by Vanessa. That, and the fact that the basement door was already open, told her that he’d been in the house earlier today. What else had he brought with him? she wondered. What did he have planned for her daughter?