Wicked Obsessions (34 page)

"Have a seat. It'll only take a minute to wash out a teapot and two cups."

The suggestion of tea made Teri aware of what she hadn't taken care of before they'd left her house hours ago. "I need to use your bathroom. All right?"

"Sure. It's just past the living room in the hall. There's only one."

Since Selena suddenly seemed to trust her again, Teri gave a moment's thought to running right then, but Selena had her purse with the car keys in the kitchen. If she had to leave on foot, she'd have a better chance after Selena was asleep. Besides, she really did need to use the bathroom.

There were also two bedrooms off the hallway, and Teri took a peek inside each. One clearly belonged to an adult, the other, a little girl. When she saw the photograph on the wall of two adults and a white-haired child, Teri knew they were in Selena's mother's house. She didn't dare dwell on the fact that Selena's room was still decorated for a very young girl, even though she had left this place only a year ago. Nor did she want to think about why Selena would have left the utilities on, as if she intended to return all along.

By the time Teri wiped up the bathroom enough to use it and returned to the kitchen, Selena had teabags steeping in two cups of steaming water.

"Feel better?" Selena asked cheerfully.

Teri did her best to answer likewise. "Yes, but I am awfully tired. I'll help you change the linens—"

"No need. You just have your tea and I'll get our beds ready. I already added sugar to your cup, but I won't have milk until tomorrow."

"This is fine," Teri said, straining her teabag, then taking a sip to prove her words. She looked at the label, satisfied to see that this was ordinary black tea, full of caffeine, and not a nice, relaxing herbal. But as the minutes stretched by, she finished her tea and found it relaxing her anyway. When Selena came back to the kitchen, Teri didn't need to fake the yawn that she had planned to convince Selena it was time to go to sleep. She could barely keep her eyes open.

"Well, look at you!" Selena said with a laugh. "If I'd taken two more minutes, you'd have been asleep where you're sitting. Go on. You can have my mother's bed."

Teri got up from the chair, but swayed back and forth before taking a step toward the bedroom. As Selena gripped her elbow, Teri told herself she had better take another short nap while waiting for her kidnapper to fall asleep.

Selena helped Teri to bed, then smiled as she watched her dear friend drift into a deep sleep. A half hour later Selena had brought everything in from the car and put it all away in the proper places. Everything would be ready when Teri woke in the morning. Selena couldn't guess how long she would sleep. The pill she'd crushed in Teri's teacup was one the doctor had prescribed for her mother last year, but that woman had been much bigger than Teri.

Taking Juliette into her mother's bedroom, Selena whispered, "See how happy she is now? Nothing bad will ever happen to her again."

And no one will ever again come between us.

"Doesn't she remind you of Mommy lying there?"

Before Tom,
Juliette amended.
We were all happy before he twisted her mind. Remember how we used to cuddle together?

Selena smiled, letting the pleasant memory warm her. "I don't think Teri would mind, just for this one night." Carefully, Selena crawled onto the bed, curled up behind Teri, and hugged her close.

It was just like having Mommy back again.

Chapter 20

Captain Benjamin Hart rarely read the reams of reports that flowed through the police station, unless a felony was involved or one of White Plains more public citizens required special handling. And, under normal circumstances, he would never see a report from another city's police department. The papers handed to him the moment he arrived that morning were definitely an exception to the norm. The incident had occurred in Tarrytown, not White Plains, and the victim was no one special in the usual sense of the word, but his name demanded Hart's personal attention nonetheless.

Rather than dealing strictly in hard facts, a good detective also relied on his curiosity, intuition and blind luck. The only reason Hart had received this particular report was because his day-shift desk sergeant, Ross Parkins, was curious, intuitive and married to a Tarrytown police officer. Rumor had it Parkins was bucking for detective.

Hart knew Parkins had been studying Kidder's case files on his own time. He didn't consider whether he'd been discussing them with his wife. She'd been working the desk at her precinct last night when the fingerprint identification had come through on a mugging victim. His name had rung a bell and she'd called her husband. Because of Hart's friendship with Detective Kidder, Parkins thought the captain would want to know about the coincidences he was certain were tied together somehow.

Rico Gambini had been with a blonde just before his murder.

Drew Marshall accompanied Mrs. Gambini to the police station to report her missing husband and helped her look through the mug shots. Hart added his own note that Marshall was also with Mrs. Gambini the day he went by her house.

Detective Kidder was investigating the Gambini murder when he was killed.

Detective Kidder's tape-recorded notes, found in his house, indicated his conviction that Drew Marshall and Teri Gambini were lovers and had plotted her husband's murder. Because Kidder's theory was completely unsupported, except in his biased mind, and because the evidence pointed so strongly to the mob, the notes had been dismissed.

Drew Marshall was assaulted and robbed after having dinner with a tall platinum blonde, possibly the same person driving the car that several witnesses saw speeding away from the scene.

Benjamin Hart decided young Parkins' instincts were valid. There was a connection here, and it wasn't just the mention of a blonde. Teri Gambini was sitting right in the middle of the coincidence pie. Either she was guilty as hell, or she was the next one due to become a victim.

Although it went against policy to interfere in a case that was out of their jurisdiction, because of the coincidences and Parkins' good work, he ordered the man to follow up on Marshall's assault. Normally, Hart wouldn't be involved at all, but Bill Kidder had been a good friend for many years and Hart still held himself partly to blame for his death.

As he was going over Parkins' analysis of the three cases, the sergeant himself appeared in the office doorway.

"Excuse me, sir?"

Hart waved the slightly built redhead toward a chair on the other side of his desk. "What have you got?"

"Drew Marshall's out of surgery, but he's listed as critical. The knife punctured a lung. The only reason he's alive is that the knife wasn't pulled out... plus, the paramedics got him to the hospital in record time. The nurse I spoke to said it's the head injuries that are the real problem now. She couldn't give me any guess about when he might regain consciousness."

Hart grimaced. Drew Marshall knew the explanations behind the coincidences and might not live to reveal them. "Anything more on the blonde or the white car that sped away from the scene?"

"Nothing yet, but I'll hear if Tarrytown's detectives uncover anything more. The woman was apparently very striking, because several people gave similar descriptions of her, which as you know rarely happens. Unfortunately, the only information the witnesses agreed on about the car was that it was white, bigger than a compact and had a New York tag. No one caught the numbers or saw who was inside."

"Okay. How about Teri Gambini?"

"I had a patrol car go by her house. There's a car in the driveway registered in her name, but no one answered the door, and all I got was her voice mail when I called. I thought I'd go by later today and, if there's still no sign of her, I'll talk to the neighbors."

"Good. Just keep me advised." As Parkins got up to leave, Hart told him, "You're going to make a good detective, son. Probably as good as Bill Kidder ever was, and that's high praise, coming from me."

Parkins' freckled face pinkened a bit, and Hart thought the young man grew an inch taller as he exited the room.

* * *

Awareness crept into Teri's consciousness one heartbeat at a time. Her mouth was so dry her tongue stuck to her teeth. As soon as she tried to move, she became aware of throbbing pain in her shoulder and back. For a second she thought she had fallen asleep on the day bed in her studio again. Then she remembered.

Selena!

Even recalling the ghastly revelations Selena had made and what she'd put Teri through during the night didn't make the chore of raising her eyelids any easier. Depression filled her as she realized she'd fallen asleep and could have missed a chance to get away. But as she opened her eyes, she thought it might not be too late after all. It was still dark. She looked toward her wrist, but without light she couldn't see the time on her watch. For once she wished she wore a digital instead of a traditional timepiece.

She blinked several times, expecting her eyes to adjust, and when they didn't, she touched them to make sure they were truly open. It wasn't simply dark, there wasn't even a hint of light. She remembered seeing a window in the bedroom. Surely some bit of moonlight would find its way through the curtains, in spite of the dense woods around the house.

Trying not to let the absence of light frighten her more than she already was, she sat up and moved her hand to the left, where she had seen a lamp on the nightstand next to the bed.

She found a table but nothing on top of it. What she did discover was that the table was pushed into a corner, which didn't jibe with what she recalled seeing. Her fingers examined the two walls the table abutted and, instead of wallpaper, they touched cool, rough stone. From there, she could tell the bed she woke up on was narrow, unlike the one she'd fallen asleep on, and rather than being centered, it was sideways along the wall.

Like a mime, she pressed both palms against what felt like a concrete block wall and inched her way toward the other end of the bed. This wasn't right. And it wasn't a dream. There had been no concrete walls in the bedroom.

At the end of the bed she rose, keeping her hands on the wall. There had to be a light switch or lamp somewhere. But suddenly she reached the end of the stone. Her fingers touched cold metal and quickly examined what she had encountered. Narrow vertical rods, spaced about three inches apart, were lined up at a right angle to the wall. By running her hands up and down, she felt three horizontal metal bars crossing the vertical ones.

Bars?

That's what they felt like, but she couldn't recall seeing any security bars on the windows of the house. Gingerly she continued to follow the row of bars until, about eight feet farther, there was another right angle and more bars.

Her heart picked up speed as she felt her way along.
What is this?
She estimated she'd gone about ten or twelve feet when something hard blocked her path and she traced its form. With panic slowing her thought processes, it took her a moment to identify a chest of drawers with her two suitcases on top. The chest was in another corner and behind it was a concrete block wall. Next to the chest were the art supplies she had taken from her studio. After a few more groping movements, she was back where she'd started.

Once more she felt her way around the limited space, not willing to believe there was no door or window. Desperately she tried to create a mental picture of what her hands had touched. Was it possible that she was in a jail cell somewhere? Had she reached the police and been arrested, as Selena had said they would be? If that was the case, why didn't she remember it?

Better question—why wasn't there any light? A jail would be well lit, and there would be other people around. Could she have gone blind and deaf,
and
have amnesia?

"Hello?" she heard herself call in a shaky voice, confirming that at least she wasn't deaf or struck dumb. "Is anybody here?" Trembling from head to toe, she gripped two of the bars and tried futilely to shake them. This wasn't possible! She was in some sort of barred cage.

In total darkness.

Alone.

"Selena!"
Teri screamed as loudly as she could. "What have you done to me?"

But no answer came. There was only silence and no way out.