You Don't Know Me (36 page)

“To the premiere,” he said, unwilling to argue with her any longer.

Hooking the cane over her arm, she slipped her free arm through his and let him help her out. In truth, her injury needed no aid from the cane any longer, but she liked the effect.

It was a shield.

“Tell me again what I raved about in the hospital while I was lying near death,” she said as they descended the stairs to the lavish mahogany foyer with its sinfully thick Aubusson rugs. A twinge. She remembered Carolyn’s rugs and that whole sordid episode.

“You pleaded with Candy to save you. And your baby.”

Hayden Stone held the door for his wife. This was a familiar refrain. About once a week she needed to hear it, to be reminded, to know she wasn’t to blame.

They were on the first steps to recovery, and unlike Connor Jackley, Hayden Stone accepted Candy Daniels Whorton’s confession wholeheartedly. It would just take time for Denise to truly believe the pain was over.

 

 

FLASH!
The bulb blasted serious illumination, turning the heads of those in the crush who were outside its brilliant range but caught in its power.

Three women stood smiling in front of the camera. Three sisters. The one in silver covered her eyes and searched behind the photographer for her companion. The one in pale peach struck another pose and wiggled her tush, giggling, but backing off when the crowd swelled forward. The one in white lifted a flashing, rhinestone-studded cane and blew a kiss.

The premiere of
Blackbird
was a huge success and the photo of the three women became an instant classic.

 

Slice . . . slice . . . slice
. The action appealed to Candy. Carefully, she cut the picture from
People,
pasting it just as carefully next to the newspaper clipping. There they were. The three angels. Her blue eyes regarded them with a mixture of affection and envy. How she wished she could be part of their beautiful life!

She reread the picture’s caption for the nth time:
“Denise and Hayley Scott at the premiere of
Blackbird
accompanied by their sister (Denise’s twin) Dinah.”

Candy sighed. Setting down the scissors, she scooted back the chair, etching the cheap linoleum floor with more scuffs, which would fill up with dirt and add to the general air of neglect. With an effort, she raised her bulk to its full height, then paused and lit a cigarette, squinting against the smoke burn.

Her eye caught the newspaper clipping. Words jumped out. “. . . runaway hit . . . Callahan scores again . . . two sisters, twice the joy . . . best film of the Christmas season . . .”

She was glad for their success. She just wished she had some of her own.

Waddling toward the back of the trailer, she pushed at the door to one of the spare bedrooms. It budged an inch, then got hung up. Candy kicked at it, swore, then reached around and started throwing boxes and debris out of the way.

Opening the door wide enough to admit her bulk, she eyed the room with disinterest. It was stuffed to the gills with junk. Boxes and debris and her mother’s cheap doll collection, mementos Jane Daniels couldn’t part with. Candy’d thrown everything in here after her mother died.

But there was one item that was hers.

Tromping on sacks and boxes, oblivious to breaking glass and crushed plastic, she dug through stuff in the corner until she found the wooden trunk that was hers, and hers alone. She’d locked it, but the key was on the cobwebby windowsill. Smashing spiders and gunk, she retrieved the key and twisted the lock.

The trunk creaked open. A waft of noxious air widened Candy’s nostrils. Gingerly, she picked up the shirt. Darkish brown patches of old blood decorated it. Twisting the garment on her finger, she examined it from all sides, then did the same with the pants.

She really didn’t know why she’d stripped him, but she had. While Denise swayed and rocked and moaned and screamed, as if she were in some kind of trance, Candy had calmly finished bashing her father over the head and ripped off all his clothes.

God, but he’d deserved it!

She remembered the day so clearly. It had been one of the last before Christmas break. Candy, fourteen, had been a freshman, and like most of the kids in high school, she’d envied Denise Scott’s good looks and ebullience even though Denise was really just poor white trash. As for Dinah, nobody much cared about her; she was too serious. And Hayley was just a shadow.

But Denise had Jimmy Fargo for a boyfriend, and he was everything all the girls at Wagon Wheel High desired: good-looking, rich, flashy, and popular. That day, Candy worked up the nerve to speak to Denise, who seemed unusually subdued and distracted. Candy took her unspoken consent as affirmation and proceeded to walk home with her, proud to be in her presence.

But Denise was a glaze-eyed sleepwalker, silent and otherworldly. They reached the edge of her property and she stopped short, unwilling to let Candy approach any closer. But Candy was curious about dear old Dad’s new family and so she dawdled even after Denise hinted for her to leave.

It was late afternoon. From the upper windows, Rihanna’s clear voice rang loudly. Ignoring Denise, Candy strode right into the house and there he was. The shit. Waiting at the kitchen table with that knowing smirk, a spider in his web, waiting for Denise.

Oh, she’d seen it all so clearly. She’d been his victim once. She knew. And when he saw
her,
his face turned livid red, and he hit her openhanded. He always knew how to hit.

Then he pushed Candy aside and came at Denise who was standing in the doorway, looking confused. With a small cry, she backed away, but he chased after her, yelling obscenities at her, calling her a whore.

As Rihanna sang on, Candy stumbled outside, following after them. Rage burned in her heart. She caught up with them in the clearing, but by that time Denise’s skirt was over her head and she was struggling and slapping at him.

And then she was screaming. “Stop! Stop! I’m pregnant! And it’s yours!”

Candy’s heart liked to stop right there. The ugly, stinking bastard! Then he made his fatal mistake: he started punching Denise, hard, right in the stomach, over and over again while she whimpered and curled up protectively, futilely trying to save her baby.

He had to die.

Calmly, she’d picked up an outsized rock—a small boulder, really—and smashed him over the head and face so many times that she fell away, exhausted.

Time passed. Denise lay still. The moon was high when Candy awakened from her reverie. It had turned the frigid ground ghostly white, making the shadows seem darker. His clothes were in her hands and he lay like a beached whale in the pale, unforgiving light, covered with black stripes of blood.

She’d touched Denise. She was cold as death herself.

That’s when Denise started screaming in earnest. A keening wail so creepy, that Candy skulked away, hurrying back to the trailer over five miles away, sneaking in and washing up and locking his clothes in the trunk.

But she was spotted. She hadn’t really thought much about hiding her crime; that had come later. But bad luck followed her. Sheriff Urganis, who was carrying on with Mama at the time, witnessed Candy sneaking in the back and scrubbing for all her life. The horny jerk-off was actually waiting outside the bathroom door when she emerged. He
knew.

Then the three angels left town, but did Sheriff Urganis give up, or blame dear old Dad’s disappearance on them? Oh, no. He came looking for Candy.

He stopped by the trailer every evening; said he was waiting for Mama to get home. Uh-uh. He was waiting to catch her.

So she’d done what she had to do. She’d sent an anonymous letter to the sheriff’s uppity wife, explaining about his little trysts, and that prim old lady kicked his sorry ass out of there. Rumor ran like brushfire. No more re-election. Nosirree.

One more mean, crooked bastard taken care of.

Candy snorted in satisfaction, gingerly put the clothing back in the trunk, and locked it. She then made her way back to the kitchen, where she lit another cigarette and watched the winter sun set outside her dirty window.

She supposed she could tell all to Connor Jackley. He certainly wanted her to. But he only wanted the truth to assure himself that all of the angels really were innocent. He didn’t care about Candy.

So let him wonder. It didn’t make no goddamn bit of difference anyway. The three angels were safe and she was free.

Candy picked tobacco off her teeth and dreamed.

Dear Reader,

I hope you enjoyed YOU DON’T KNOW ME, my “Hollywood” story, kind of a departure from what I’ve been writing lately. I had a lot of fun working with three main characters whose lives are about to unravel because of the secret they’ve held close for many, many years.

My next book, THE KILLING GAME, will debut in late July 2016. THE KILLING GAME revisits Detective September Rafferty who appeared first in NOWHERE TO RUN, then NOWHERE TO HIDE, NOWHERE SAFE, and last year’s YOU CAN’T ESCAPE. “Nine,” as September is known to friends (because she was born in the ninth month of the year), stumbled upon a strange, though seemingly cut-and-dried, case of fraud in YOU CAN’T ESCAPE, uncovering two miscreants who had been stealing social security checks. But now, in THE KILLING GAME, that case has turned into something more far-reaching and macabre. A literal “skeleton in the closet” has set Nine and her partner, Detective Sanders, on a search for answers about who the victim was and who did him in.

Across town, Andi Wren has been receiving strange notes, a play on her last name.
Little birds need to fly
seems innocuous enough, but Andi feels something dangerous is lurking beneath the words. She sets out to find herself a bodyguard and settles on ex-cop Lucas Denton. Luke isn’t sure he’s really cut out for this kind of work, but both Andi, and the notes, intrigue him enough to give it a try. Then suddenly Andi’s case intersects with Nine’s, and a killer, who thinks of himself as a “gamesman,” threatens them all.

For more information on THE KILLING GAME and all of my books, visit me at
www.nancybush.net
or join me on Facebook and Twitter.

 

 

 

 

The ferry plowed across surprisingly rough, gray waves, its running lights quivering against the black waters of Puget Sound. Belinda Meadowlark sat with a book at a table inside the upper deck, but though she read the same passage three times, it was Rob’s handsome face she kept seeing superimposed on the page. Finally, she closed the hardback with a decided thump. It was a story about love and revenge and she couldn’t see how the ending was going to be anything but disappointing. She wanted happy endings. Always. Maybe because she’d had so few of them.

But that had all changed when she met Rob. He was gorgeous and funny and he struck up a conversation with her at the bar in Friday Harbor the previous April. OMG! When she recalled the way he sought her out, it caused a hot thrill to run right from her hoohaw straight up to her breasts. My, my. She damn near had to fan herself. She could feel it even now, just at the thought, and her cheeks reddened and she looked around, almost certain someone would notice.

But there were only a few people on the ferry tonight and the ones that were had stayed on the lower deck.

Rob . . . she could still see the way his lustrous brown eyes had looked her over. “Do I know you?” he’d asked curiously, tilting his head in that way that made her want to grab him and squirm all over him.

Of course he didn’t know her. She was no beauty and she could stand to lose a few pounds, where he was casually handsome and looked totally fit. He’d been wearing short sleeves, even though it had been brisk with a capital
BRRR
that day that he’d stood outside the hotel, watching the passengers disembark from the last ferry. Belinda lived in Friday Harbor and had immediately tagged him as a tourist.

“I don’t think so.”

He’d slowly shaken his head, wagging it side to side. “No, we’ve met . . .”

“I would have remembered,” she rushed out, suddenly wishing it were so. He looked good enough to eat and he smelled a little like Old Spice and something darker and muskier.

He snapped his fingers. “Belinda,” he said. “And your last name’s . . . some bird name?”

She goggled at him and gasped aloud in shock and delight. “Meadowlark!”

“That’s right.” He grinned. “I remember now. You were pointed out to me at some event around here a year or so ago.”

She’d racked her brain, trying to think where she’d been that he would have seen her. “A year or so ago?”

“Right about then, I think.”

“I don’t know what that would be,” she’d murmured dubiously. “Maybe the clambake?” The owners of one of the restaurants near the harbor came from the East Coast and put on an annual clambake, adding salmon to the menu to make it more Pacific Northwest, but it was really kind of a small affair and she’d only been there a minute or two before she had to leave.

“That sounds right,” he agreed after a moment of thought. “Well, what are you doing now? Can you have a drink? I’m buying.”

“I—need to go home . . . first.”

“Come back. I’ll be in the bar here.” He jerked his head in the direction of a small place called the Sand Bar. “I don’t know anybody else around here. My buddies all took off sailing, but I’m not heading home till tomorrow.”

“Where’s that?”

“California. I’m based out of Los Angeles. I sell sports equipment up and down the West Coast.”

Belinda had immediately thought about the pounds she needed to lose, and she’d been deeply embarrassed.

“Go on home,” Rob had encouraged, “but come back. What do you like to drink? I’ll have one waiting for you.”

She didn’t drink, as a rule, but she didn’t want to seem unsophisticated so she said, “A cosmopolitan?”

“Perfect.” He’d smiled at her, a flash of white, then had headed toward the bar. She’d almost followed right after him, but she’d forced herself to go home first, then had looked in the mirror in despair. How could
he
be interested in
her?
It didn’t make sense. But then he was just trying to pass the time and he’d seen her and knew her. It couldn’t be from the clambake, though. She wanted it to be, but she’d barely arrived at the beach when her mother had called and demanded she help with Grandpa who was raising hell at the nursing home again.

Who cares? she’d told herself as she squeezed into her best jeans and the purple blouse, real silk, that made her breasts look good and had a sexy shimmer in dim light, which the Sand Bar had in spades. Sometimes it was so dark, you felt like you had to raise your hand four inches from your face to see it.

She’d hurried to meet him, slipping a little on the wet concrete walk that led to the Sand Bar’s front door, her new boots kind of pinchy and uncomfortable, but they looked good.

Inside, she followed the dull path of carpet to the darkened main bar where, luckily, a pink neon beer sign in the shape of a crab helped her make out some forms.

“Belinda!” Rob called, standing up at a table at the back of the room.

She threaded her way carefully toward him, decrying her bumpity bump hips as they brushed the tables. When she neared he reached out and grabbed her arm, guiding her the last few steps to a black Naugahyde bench. He sat right down beside her, their thighs touching, then he turned on his phone and used it like a flashlight to show her her drink.

“It’s really dark in here,” she said apologetically.

“I kind of like it.” And his hand had slipped along her forearm, sending her nerve endings into high gear.

She honestly couldn’t remember all that much about the rest of the evening, except that he drove her home and kissed her lightly on the lips at the front door of her crappy apartment. She’d told him she was a teacher’s aide, and had said she was working on her degree; she remembered that much. And she did recall throwing herself into his arms and planting a sloppy kiss back at him.

Embarrassing!

But he’d laughed, squeezed her, and said that he would keep in touch.

She’d thought that would be it, but he was as good as his word, texting her from every city he visited. Two weeks after that first encounter he was back, and that time she’d let him into her bedroom. Actually, she’d practically dragged him in and he’d made love to her so sweetly, she’d fought back tears. Luckily, she hadn’t broken down and cried. How juvenile would that have been? At the door he’d kissed her hard enough to make her toes curl.

“When will you be back?” she’d asked, dying inside at the thought of not seeing him for a while. She would die without him. Just die.

“Next Saturday night. Take the last ferry out of Friday Harbor to Orcas Island,” he told her.

“The last ferry? I could come earlier,” she said eagerly.

“No. The last ferry. Go to the upper deck. I’ll have something special for you.”

So here she was, cruising along. The sun had sunk into the sea and there was a quiet somnolence to the humming engines and near-empty boat. She couldn’t concentrate on her book. She half expected something amazing to happen, like he might suddenly appear or something, but so far there’d been no surprises.

Bzzz.
She jumped when she heard the text.

She looked around wildly, eagerly. He was here! But where?

And then she spied him on the outside deck, peering through the window at her. He lifted a hand in greeting, his teeth a grin of white. Abandoning her book, she ran to the door, sliding it open and was greeted by a slap of cold sea air and a buffeting wind. When she rounded the corner he’d disappeared from where he’d looked at her through the window. “Where are you?” she called, but the wind had risen and it felt like her words were thrown back into her throat.

“Right here.”

He was behind her, grabbing her around the waist.

She laughed in delight and tried to turn to face him, but he wouldn’t have it. She realized he was humping her from behind.

“I want you, little bird. Right here. Right now.”

“Are you crazy?” She giggled. “Anybody could come up on us!”

“But they won’t. Come on.”

And then she was sprawled facedown on the deck and he was yanking down her jeans and pulling up her hips, jamming himself inside her, pumping hard and fast. It hurt like hell, and she couldn’t help the little yelp of pain, though she tried to stifle it. She acquiesced, her eyes sliding around in fear, hoping against hope no one would discover them.

She was relieved when it was over. “Good, huh,” he breathed in her ear, one hand gripping her breast almost painfully.

“Good,” she murmured, reaching for the jeans that were pooled around her ankles. She was in an ungainly position, on her hands and knees, when he suddenly swooped her to her feet, finally turning her to look at him.

“My pants,” she whispered, trying to grab at them with her right hand.

“You don’t need them where you’re going.”

“What?”

“Birds need to fly.”

And then he picked her up with furious strength and tossed her over the rail. She was so stunned, she didn’t cry out until the black water closed over her head. She gulped in water, flailing, dragged down by the jeans tangled at her ankles, unable to kick with any strength. By the time she could make a sound the ferry had churned away into the blackness, and the wind shrieked louder than her voice. She screamed and screamed but she was no match for the gales that tore across the surface of the water.

The last sight she had on this earth were the ferry lights, growing smaller and smaller, finally winking out.

Then the black water closed over her head.