The Ex Who Wouldn't Die (6 page)

More silence.

S
he
glance
d
at her dad.

He met her gaze briefly, and in that instant she knew that he knew, but he also understood. "Then that's what we'll do," he said with finality.

"
Emerson
!"
Beverly exclaimed.

"Dad
dy
!"
Jenny added her disapproval.

"W
ould you pass the bread
, Beverly
?"

Judge
Caulfield
had ruled
in her favor…this time. 

That evening Amanda settled into the room where she'd grown up.
It
was cool and dark, the heavy curtains trapping the coolness in
side
and keeping the heat out. Those curtains also kept out the moonlight and the night sounds and any contact with the outside world. Amanda threw them open and lifted the window, then drew in a deep breath of the night air. She'd have to
remember to
close it in the morning or listen to a speech from her mother about
the ills of dust and heat and insects.

She took her cell phone from her purse and lay down across her old bed which was, she had to admit, a lot more comfortable th
an the hospital bed
. Time for her daily check-in call with Dawson, her assis
tant at her motorcycle repair
shop.

"Everything's fine," he assured her. "We got a Honda Gold Wing in for some big time repairs. Looks like
it got in a fight with a semi
and lost. And I got a
nother
custom paint job." He spoke the last sentence with pride.

As a
part-time
college student studying art and computer technology, Dawson Page had seemed an unlikely candidate when he'd applied for the job as her assistant. But he
did own a motorcycle and had made minor repairs
to his own bike
, plus he was the only applicant with no missing teeth and no tobacco tin in his back pocket, so she
'
d hired him
. H
e'd immediately become invaluable.

"If I take off a couple more days, are you going to be able to handle it and keep up with your classes?"

"Of course! You don't have that much business. I mean—"

Dawson was blushing. Amanda didn't ha
ve to see him to know that, and the thought made her smile. She
rather liked his tendency to say whatever popped into his mind. No filter between brain and mouth. Complete honesty.

"It's okay," she assured him.
"
I know what you meant."

"Take all the time you need. I've got everything here under control."

"Great. You know where to reach me if you need me."

"One thing, Amanda. Some guy called for you, and when I told him you weren't here, he wanted to know when you'd be back."

"Oh? Well, if he calls again, give him my cell number."

"I'm not sure that would be a good idea. He blocked his number so I couldn't see who was calling.
I didn't like the sound of his voice.
I think he might be one of Charley's…um…acquaintances."

Damn!
Even dead, Charley continued to cause problems.
"You're right. Don't give him my cell phone number. I'll deal with him when I get
there
."

She disconnected the call and lay back with a sigh.
Was she never going to be completely rid of Charley? The cops thought she killed him
, and somebody, probably somebody he'd conned,
was looking for her.

Who knew those two little
words, "I do," would lead to so many nightmares
?

She
slipped into an old T-shirt, settled into bed and was drifting off to sleep when
a voice woke her with a start
.

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

She sat up, wide awake, heart pounding
, peering around the room
for the speaker
.

Oh, for goodness sake!
she chastised herself
, lying back down
.
Nobody's here.
Nobody spoke. It was all in my
mind, just like the first time.
Charley didn't say that. And the stranger who called the sho
p was just somebody trying to get his money back from me now that Charley's dead
.

But she got up and closed her bedroom window.

***

Three days in the house where she grew up. Three days of eating good food, relaxing in air-conditioned comfort, sleeping on a plush mattress, and letting her body heal. Three days of listening to her mother and
Jenny
. Amanda was ready to run away from home.

When she proclaimed herself completely healed and ready to go home, her father
set up her
interview with the police for the following day. The thought of being grilled by the cops felt infinitely preferable to being criticized by her mother for everything from her hair style to her
unpolished toenails
.

T
he next day
she
prepared for her visit with the cops by putting on
the
dress
and
heels
her mother had
sen
t
t
o the hospital
, taming her red curls with a lot of hair goo and even putting on makeup.
When she emerged from her bedroom,
her mother smiled.

"You look so pretty. You should
wear a
dress and do your makeup more often. Why don't you and Jenny and I go shopping tomorrow?"

It was, Amanda thought,
a nice gesture
. Controlling, but nice. "Thanks, Mom," she said,
"but I have a lot to do at the shop
.
Dawson needs a day off.
" And she needed to find out what the mysterious stranger wanted, the man who'd called anonymously a second time to check on her whereabouts.
If it was somebody expecting to get back money Charley had taken from him, she'd tell him where he could go to find that money.
"
Are we ready, Dad?"

"
Brian
should be here any minute."

Brian
. Her attorney.
You have the right to remain silent, you have the right to an attorney…

Charley continued to cause
problems.

Brian arrived, and t
he
three of them drove to the police station.
Her father
spoke to the receptionist, and they were led
immediately
to a room which was spectacularly mundane, nothing to suggest an appropriate place for the discussion of murder. The large rectangular space contained a rectangular table and five wooden chairs that echoed the rectangular theme.

Based on her knowledge of
police stations, such knowledge gathered entirely from
television crime shows,
Amanda
assumed the mirrored wall was a one-way mirror through which various detectives would be watching the interrogation, looking for signs of guilt. The room smelled of old wood and stale sweat and gave her the creeps in spite of its ordinary composition.

Amanda fell into one of the scarred wooden chairs with her father on one side and her lawyer on the other. Protected. Surrounded by her own personal warriors.

In spite of all that, sitting in the creepy rectangular room, she had an uneasy feeling, as if she were hanging over the side of a cliff
with a brutish cop
stepping on her fingertips.

Ridiculous,
she chided herself. This wasn't a television crime show with "good cop, bad cop" characters trying to bully an innocent person into confessing to something she hadn't done. This was real life where the cops only wanted to ferret out the facts, discover the truth, find out what really happened.

The door opened, slammed
back
against the wall,
and the bad cop strode
inside.

Chapter Four

Amanda
flinched. S
o did the man who stood in
the doorway. "Sorry," he said. "
Guess somebody
finally oiled
those hinges.
"

So maybe he wasn
'
t the bad cop. All
Amanda
's
knowledge of good cops/bad cops also came from TV crime shows, but she was pretty sure bad cops didn
'
t apologize for slamming a door.

This guy
didn't really look evil, either. He
was tall, wore a rumpled shirt with a button missing, no tie and gray sla
cks that had seen better days.
His brown hair was tousled and several weeks overdue for a visit to the barber.
He was a few hours overdue for a shave, too.
She probably would have liked the man had they met under different circumstances. But these were the only circumstances they had, and she was
fairly certain this cop
wasn
'
t her friend.

As if to negate his apology, he strode forcefully into the room, never taking his eyes off her
face
, slapped a file folder on the table then sat down across from Amanda.