The Ex Who Wouldn't Die (11 page)

Amanda
'
s head snapped in her father
'
s direction.
"
You hated Charley! Why would it matter what he wanted?
"

"Mandy
, Charley is dead. Soon the police will find who killed him, or at least be certain you didn
'
t, and everything…your marriage, the things he did…it will all be over. Charley is dead, and you need to put
it
behind you and get on with your life.
"

Amanda shook her head and laughed, angry and amused at the same time.
"
Stop that
slippery
lawyer talk! You know better than to think I
'
m going to let this go until you give me a straight answer.
"

Emerson
'
s lips lifted in a faint smile.
"
You are
definitely
your father's
daughter.
You'd have made a good lawyer, you know." For a moment, his eyes gaze
d
into
the
distance.
H
e gave a resigned sigh. "
So what do you want to know about Charley
'
s family? They
'
re small town,
hard-working but
uneducated.
Blue collar. Maybe
he
was ashamed of them. Charley always pretended to be somebody he wasn't
.
"

"That's nuts. He'd make up a story about a drug dealer and a prostitute mother to cover the fact that his parents were blue collar? I don't think so. I think he'd have hidden his family no matter who they were. Charley was always pretending, always lying about who he was. Maybe he had to disconnect from everything and everybody real in his life so he could live the fiction he created."

"That's possible," her father agreed, eyes on the road ahead. "Perhaps in order to become the persona or personas he became, he needed to block out the truth even from himself."

"Could be. I don't suppose we'll ever know the answer to that question, but that still leaves my original question which
can
be answered. Why didn't you tell me about Charley's family, my in-laws? They were my family, too."

"I'm your family. Your mother, your sister
and I
. We're your family. If Charley chose not to share his family with you, that was his decision."

"Damn it, Dad, you're doing that lawyer thing again!"

He
r father
turned off the street and
down the driveway beside the large building that housed her shop,
Amanda's Motorcycles and More
. He pulled close
to the outside stai
rcase
leading up
to her apartment and stopped. Putting the car in
park,
he turned to face her
, his expression serious.

"You're my daughter. I'm your father. I love you beyond all reason, and my number one priority has
always
been your ha
ppiness, yours and your sister's
. But I don't worry about Jenny like I do about you. She's easier. Her life flows smoothly along her pathways, no speed
bumps. You came into the world
screaming and waving your clenched fists, and you've been fighting ever since." He touched her cheek with the back of one hand. "You refuse to take advice. You refuse to learn from the experience of others. You're stubborn and willful and determined to make your own mistakes, and because I love you, I try to stop you. Maybe my advice isn't always right, but it isn't always wrong, and always
my intentions are to spare you pain and make you happy."

Amanda gave a frustrated sigh. "You're not going to answer my question, are you?"

Her father
leaned across the console and kissed her cheek. "I love you, Mandy." He
opened his door and started to get out of the car.

Amanda placed a hand on his arm.
"
If you can
'
t be honest with me, you can
'
t walk me upstairs.
"

Emerson nodded gravely
.
"Very well.
I
'
ll wait here
and watch
until you get inside.
"

She glared at him.
"This isn't over."

One side of his mouth tilted upward in a half-smile. "I know."

Amanda
shook her head
, opened her door and exited the car. Her father could be very stubborn.

But
so could her father's daughter.

She strode determinedly toward the old
two story red brick
building with her shop on the ground floor and her apartment on the second.

Fumbling
with her keys
,
she climbed the rickety wooden stairs
to her front door
then turned to wave to her father. He waved back but showed no signs of leaving.
Irritated as she was with him, she couldn't stop a slight smile at his protectiveness. Whatever his reason for withholding information about Charley's fam
ily, it probably sprang from some absurd notion
of protecting her. She couldn't be truly angry with someone who loved her that much.

Grasping the door knob, she inserted her key in the deadbolt…and realized with a shock that the door was unlocked. Had she
been so upset she'd
forgotten to lock it
the day
she
left
for that insane ride to Charley's
?
No, she distinctly remembered locking it then testing to be sure since she planned to leave town.

Dawson
had a spare key. C
ould he have come up for some reason then forgotten to lock
when he left
?

Not likely.
Dawson was OCD to the nth degree. When he closed up the shop downstairs, he always checked the door, sometimes two or three times. If he'd gone into her apartment, he'd have locked, checked, relocked and rechecked.

He tried to kill you! He'll try again! You're in danger!

Oh, for crying out loud! Why did she keep remembering those stupid warnings from a pain-induced hallucination?

She
turned the knob
forcibly
and
shoved
the door
open so hard, it slammed
back
against the wall.

T
he place was dark
, all the blinds down
.
That was creepy. The living room had great windows,
and since
this was the only two story house on the block, she
always kept the blinds open.

She
licked her dry lips and told herself to stop being silly
.
Dawson
could have closed
up
if
he'd been
in
here. H
e preferred a cave atmosphere to a glass house.
The two of them alternately and obsessively opened and closed the blinds over the small windows in the shop downstairs.

That
had to
be
it. Dawson checked on her apartment and closed the blinds then inexplicably forgot to lock the door. Even Dawson couldn't be one hundred percent OCD.

She took a step inside, flicked on the light switch, heard her father's car drive away, and suddenly had to fight a rising, irrational
panic at the thought of being alone
.

She
straightened her spine,
closed the door behind her and turned the lock.
She'd never been frightened to be alone, and she wasn't going to start now.

She was home. Home was a good place to be.

Immediately upon moving in, she'd freed the hardwood flooring from the ugly green carpet that had protected it through the years and insured it was only slightly battered, just enough to give it character. Coffee table, lamp tables and a large bookcase
—g
arage sale treasures of different wooden hues and textures
—g
ave the place an air of genteel antiquity. Her sofa blazed with brilliant bursts of red, purple, yellow and green, adding a bright, eclectic note to the room.

Her home would never appear in Better Homes and Gardens, but the effect pleased her.

Tonight, however, as she moved through the room, the familiar aura of comfort eluded her. Something didn't feel right. But nothing was wrong. Nothing was out of place.

Except the unlocked door and those blinds.

Get over it!
she ordered herself.
C
heck the closets and under the bed,
then
have a glass of wine and relax.

Tomorrow she'd open the blinds again. Not tonight. Not because she was frightened of what she might see outside. She just saw no reason to open them tonight when it was dark out there.

She strode
determinedly into the large kitchen with
its
white-painted cabinets and her old-fashioned
enamel-topped table. Everything seemed in order there
…
except
again
the blinds were closed.

Had to be Dawson.

She took one of her mismatched crystal stem glasses from the cabinet, retrieved an open bottle of white wine from the refrigerator and poured herself a generous serving.

Before leaving the kitchen, she slid a carving knife from the wooden block. Not that she was nervous, but, hey, you never knew when you might need to carve a roast.