Revenge is Sweet (A Samantha Church Mystery) (3 page)

My Dear Sweet April,

Have
I ever told you that sometimes I feel like a Picasso painting? Fragments of me here and there. So many pieces scattered about that when I look at myself in the mirror, I don’t know which piece to look at first.

Sweetie, you probably think Mommie is crazy for telling you that, but it’s true. Someday, when the time comes and you eventually read these letters, then I hope you will understand. I want to share this time in my life with you now because before long, it will fade from my memory and I want for you, sweetie, to know everything.

I stayed put in my hospital bed until Howard came back. He was gone more than an hour. I had started to wonder if he wouldn’t be back before morning. I just couldn’t stay there another night. I had almost dozed off when he came into my room, slightly rustling the bag he was carrying. It was just enough to wake me. When I looked at him, he was beaming from ear to ear.

He had driven back to the ranch and brought a pair of sweats for me. He stood there watching as I pulled my sweatshirt over my head. He had his arms, thick
as tree trunks, crossed over his barrel of a chest. I could see his right eyebrow arched slightly over the rim of his glasses. With that shiny baldpate of his, I remembered thinking as I often have, all he needed was a gold loop earring to go with his white T-shirt and he could pass for Mr. Clean.

I don’t know how, but he managed to get that IV out of my hand, and I didn’t feel a thing. “How’d you do that?” I asked him, knowing
, April, that I’d get his stock reply.

“I was in the Merchant Marines.”

Somehow we were able to slip out of the hospital without being seen. Can you imagine?! You know, sweetie, that’s not an easy thing to do when you’re a man the size of Howard. He’s told us so many times how “I’ve lost a coupla inches ’cause I’m gettin’ old.” I’ve told him over and over that I don’t believe him. At seventy-two, he’s easily still a good three or four maybe even five inches over six feet.

I felt like a criminal trying to escape. I stood behind his towering frame and waited as he looked out the door of my hospital room toward the nurses’ station. I looked down at his hand wrapped around mine. Mine seemed lost in his. I could barely see the tips of my fingers. If someone ever asked me to describe his hands, I’d have to say that they were thick like baseball mitts.

The ride home exhausted me. But perhaps just knowing where we were headed, home to Nona’s ranch, where a rambling house sits at the center of a two hundred and eighty acre spread, I felt a sense of exhilaration. And freedom.

But I can’t sleep, and I
am so ashamed to tell you, sweetie, that Mommie wants a drink so bad I can hardly stand it.

There has been only one thing that has stopped me—at last count, it had been two weeks, three days and almost eleven hours since I had my last drink. In the time that has passed I am now even closer to getting
you back with me for forever. Never mind that I saw the bottle of red wine that Nona keeps in the cupboard that she and Howard like to enjoy in their coffee. I have to confess, honey, that I had my hand wrapped around the bottle just an hour ago, ready to pour it in a glass. Who would have known? Yet somehow, somehow I had the wherewithal to stop and put the bottle back where I found it. At last count, it has been two weeks, three days and almost eleven hours since I had my last drink and I can’t turn back now.

So I sit here now in the living room in front of the large window that overlooks the front yard. A half-moon shines in a sky filled with a blanket of stars. The moonlight bounces off a carpet of snow that covers the lawn, making it brighter, as though it is near dawn. But the sun is hours from rising. The house is quiet and I am warm from drinking the homemade hot chocolate that Howard learned to make in the Merchant Marines. The room still smells faintly of fire and wood. Flickers from the last of the flames in the fireplace still rise and I watch them drift upward until they get lost in the enclosing darkness.

In this moment everything seems right in the world. But of course I know it’s not.

On the way home from the hospital, we passed a street corner. It used to be just any old street corner, three maybe four miles from the turn off to the ranch, but it won’t be that way anymore. I had been there just a few days before waiting for the light to change. I was thinking about
your Auntie Robin when I saw a young woman jogging in place. It was early that morning, six-thirty, perhaps, but she was out running. She was tall and slender, black spandex pants that seemed to emphasize every muscle covered her legs. Her hair was dark and had been pulled back in a ponytail. I could see her breath coming out like puffs of cotton. The light changed and I watched her run off until she turned a corner and disappeared. I kept looking in the direction I last saw her for what seemed a long time. The car behind me honked. I looked in the mirror and saw the driver shaking his fist at me. Angry. In a real hurry to get somewhere.

I told Howard about that morning on our way home tonight.

April, honey, thinking too much about Auntie Robin hurts me. She lies in a cold grave. Her life over before it had the time to unfold. But she didn’t die needlessly. I made sure of that with Wilson’s help. They murdered her because of what she knew, what she had uncovered. They thought they had silenced her. But they were wrong. My story in the Friday edition exposed them and showed all the work Robin had done. She died before she had the chance to bring them to justice.

And it is my biggest fear that we are going to pay dearly for that now.

God, I could use a drink right now! Instead I am going to the kitchen for more hot chocolate. I boiled more water staring at the two photos Nona keeps near the stove. She says she likes to look at them when she’s cooking. I picked up the one of Auntie Robin and me taken when we were little like you are now. Maybe when I was ten and she was six. Auntie Robin’s feet don’t even touch the floor yet! We’re sitting on a wooden bench, both leaning slightly to the right. Everything we wear matches, even our shoes and socks. One of my hands is slightly raised off my lap. Robin’s are folded and resting easy on hers.

Looking at
you, honey, in the other photograph, I might as well still be looking at Auntie Robin. You are so the image of her. You look more like your aunt with every passing year. You know you are becoming the tomboy that Robin was!

And,
sweetie, I have lost you, too. You are living on an island somewhere in the Puget Sound in the Pacific Northwest, with your father’s mother (I am sorry, baby, but I just can’t bring myself to say ‘your grandmother.’) I want you to know that she has you for now because I have made such a mess of things. Your father saw to it that you would go live with her should something happen to him and there wasn’t a thing I could do about it. That was then, sweetie, but I have every intention of doing something about it now.

It hurts my heart that
you won’t talk to me very much on the telephone, but I understand. You only answer the questions I ask and offer nothing more. But you talk to Howard and Nona. You don’t want to get off the phone with them! Nona told me last time you talked that you said you liked her better as a grandma. It’s always raining here too, you told Nona.

Baby
, you have every reason not to want to talk to me. I am working to change that, to make things better. To make me better. Then you can come home. I will bring you home. I don’t like that you’re so far away. That you are in a different time zone.

But I have to find Wilson first. God, I hope he is still alive. I have been sitting here telling myself that he isn’t
dead, that he’s in a room somewhere, still alive, getting food and water. And he’ll stay there until I come and find him and bring him home. For some reason they let me go and kept him. But why? And who are they? And what do they want from us?

For reasons that I still do not know, or understand, Wilson has continued to believe in me
, sweetie. He gave me a job when nobody else would, helped me with Auntie Robin and is helping me work to get a handle, get some control back in my life. For reasons I do not know, he seems to understand my problem with alcohol. I know they say that men and women are not supposed to sponsor each other, but Wilson has agreed to be my sponsor until I can gather up the nerve to ask someone else. He hesitated when I asked. I saw something flicker in his eyes, as if my request was something he should refuse, but I can’t be sure. It happened so fast, as if he sensed that I had noticed and it was something he didn’t want me to see. Its meaning still escapes me. Wilson wouldn’t tell me no. Or is it that he simply couldn’t?

He was silent for a moment as he considered my request, rubbing his thumb lightly across his lips back and forth, before saying, “Of course, Sam, if you think it will help you. I’ll be your sponsor.”

I thanked him and left his office, but not before stealing a quick glance back at him. He had gone back to writing his column. He centered his reading glasses back on his nose and began staring intently at his computer, deep in thought, so I know he didn’t know I was still standing there watching him in those quiet moments.

I cannot let Wilson down now
, baby. I will find him. Wherever he is, I must find him. Howard will help me. They must have taught him something in the Merchant Marines about how to find people who have been kidnapped.

I look at the clock. Past three thirty. I have to get up in a few hours and get to work.
As I came to my bedroom, I caught sight of myself in the hallway mirror. The weight I’ve gained shows in my face. Your Auntie Robin was the dark Italian, tall and beautiful. She had Nona’s coloring, the olive skin, the rich dark hair, eyes wide and brilliant blue. Everything about Robin turned heads. I, however, have the ability to walk into rooms without being noticed, as though I’m part of the furniture, the old, worn sofa perhaps. I am blond and blue-eyed, but don’t let that fool you, my sweet April. I have the fair skin color of my father. I am blond, going ash now.

And still fragmented too.

You know, sweetie, I’ve never much cared for Picasso’s paintings. Perhaps it may be that I have always felt like his paintings whenever I’ve looked in the mirror. Bits and pieces everywhere. Everything out of joint, never really quite lining up.

Well, maybe someday I’ll be able to see Monet when I look at myself in the mirror.

No fragmentation.

Only colors and contrasts of fields and trees, sky, gardens and flowers, everything blending together into one.

Goodnight, sweetie, Mommie loves you, now and always.

Anne Misner, the receptionist at the Grandview Perspective, had been watching Sam make her way from the Honda Accord toward the office.
“’Bout time you showed up,” she said.

It was a gray Monday morning, stiff with wind that kept the temperature below freezing. Anne
watched Sam get out of the car, adjust her coat and scarf slightly, then pull her briefcase from the back seat. It was a few minutes before eight when Sam entered the office. Anne hardly waited until she was through the front door before calling out to her. “We thought maybe you went off to Mexico with Wilson.”

Her comment caught Sam off guard. “You’re kidding right?” her tone incredulous.

“’Course I am, silly,” Anne said and shook her head. She removed her reading glasses and let them fall to her chest where they were caught by a small beaded gold chain.

The front counter that hit Sam about chest high blocked the reception desk. She set her bag on the floor, stood against it, placed her hands lightly on the surface, and looked at Anne.

“Nick’s down stairs,” Anne said and pointed with her head in the direction of the managing editor’s office. Her eyebrows drifted toward the top of her head and Sam saw the heavy green eye shadow she always wore, which didn’t blend well with her green eyes.

“He’s been waiting for you...” Anne’s voice trailed off as she stopped to adjust her earpiece to answer the phone.

“Good morning, Grandview Perspective, how may I direct your call...” Anne hesitated and looked up to Sam as she listened to the caller.

“That would be Dee Schaffer in advertising,” she said into the phone. “She’s not in yet, but I’ll put you through to her voice mail.”

Anne waited a moment to make sure the line connected before she turned her attention back to Sam. “Sorry ’bout that. Anyway, he came in this morning all in a mood and grumbled something like, ‘if Sam decides to show up today, make sure she comes to see me first, before she does anything else’.”

“What’s his problem?”

“Mr. Managing Editor thinks you just blew off the rest of the week since Wilson was going to be in Mexico.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Sam said, her heart sinking at Anne’s revelation.

Sam took a long, deep breath and held it briefly before exhaling. She studied Anne a moment, a short, plump woman that she put in her mid 60
’
s and not long to retirement. Short, curly, frosted-brown hair framed her round face. She had a pleasant smile that matched a pleasant phone voice and a pleasant personality. She had been answering phones at the Perspective for nearly fifteen years. “Makes perfect sense, and so typical of him when it comes to me,” Sam said shaking her head.

It only now occurred to her that
, of course, no one would have been looking for them. Wilson was supposed to be on a plane to Mexico the following morning, the start of a twelve-day vacation. No one expected him to be missing. And given her shoddy record and poor performance at the Perspective so far, never mind that she had just written the biggest story of her career, no one on staff would have really been surprised if she didn’t show up for work during Wilson’s absence.

With the exception of Anne Misner and David Best, a beat reporter who covered Truman County government, the rest of the staff mostly ignored Sam. She had come from the Denver Post to the Perspective just over a year ago. Talk spread among Perspective employees that Sam had been fired from the daily because she refused to seek help for a drinking problem she claimed she didn’t have. Everyone found it hard to believe that someone like Wilson Cole Jr. would hire her. Most
of the staff felt she didn’t deserve a second chance. She knew there was an undertone of dislike toward her, others in the office thinking (or saying behind her back) that Sam knew she had Wilson on her side. She made a great show around him to make sure he was happy, but when he wasn’t there she took liberties because she knew Wilson would back her up.

But Anne was always
nice to Sam. She treated her the way an aunt would treat her niece. She asked about her weekends and about April and listened whenever Sam would talk about one of the court cases that Robin happened to be prosecuting at the time. Occasionally they would go have hamburgers for lunch.

It wasn’t until Sam broke the exclusive story in the Perspective a month ago, exposing the lucrative drug smuggling operation that the Grandview Police Department had been running for years, that anyone at the newspaper started talking to her.

“I thought you said you were going to move to your grandmother’s ranch?” Anne said. “At least if you were there, days wouldn’t go by without someone hearing from you and we’d have a way to reach you. At least at your grandmother’s someone would answer the phone besides the answering machine at your apartment.”

Sam nodded, knowing that she yet had to change her
‘in case of emergency’ contact from Robin to Howard and Nona. “Howard has already scolded me about that because they hadn’t heard from me for a few days, either.”

Sam raised her hand to rub her forehead. When she did, Anne noticed her wrist.

“What happened?” Anne said, reaching out with a motherly instinct to touch Sam’s wrist. But Sam pulled away before she could.

“You mean everyone really thinks I went to Mexico with Wilson?” Sam asked, ignoring Anne’s query about her wrist.

The phone rang again, distracting Anne’s attention. She listened a moment, then nodded and said, “The publisher? Well…” her voice trailed off as she covered the mouthpiece with her hand. She looked up at Sam as if to say ‘what should I tell them?’ Sam shrugged.

Anne directed her voice back to the receiver. “I’m sorry, but Wilson’s out of town all week. Would you like his voice mail? Or our managing editor is in.” Anne listened a moment more and said, “I’ll put you into Wilson’s voice mail.”

When the call went through Anne looked up at Sam.

“What’s going on?” Anne asked. “Didn’t Wilson go to Mexico?”

“Anne, when we left here last Tuesday night, three men jumped us in the parking lot.” Sam leaned in as close to Anne as the counter would allow and whispered, “We were kidnapped.”

Anne stared at Sam. Her eyes wide and round as baseballs.

Sam went on, “I don’t know where they took us, but wherever it was, Wilson is still there. God, at least I hope that’s where he is. I don’t remember much else and I am afraid to say or do anything until I hear from them. They might do something to Wilson. When they came after us that night, we struggled with them and I slipped and fell against the bumper and knocked myself cold. Wilson kept trying to wake me. I could hear him talking to me.”

Anne
paled as Sam talked, shaking her head slightly.

“I don’t know if they had Wilson tied too,
” Sam continued, “but my hands were tied together so tight that my wrist started to bleed and that’s how I got this.” She held up her wrist again and Anne fixed her attention on it.

“How’d you get away?” Anne asked.

Sam shrugged. “I don’t know. I just woke up in the hospital and Howard was there. He said they found me in Wilson’s car off an exit on I-70. That’s what really scares me, Anne. I know they didn’t just let me go out of the kindness of their hearts.”

“Good Lord,” Anne said finally. “Sam, I’m sorry, I feel so bad. Here all this time, we thought Wilson was in Mexico
and now for all we know he could be dead. We need to call the police.”

Anne was ready to punch in 911, but Sam reached down and put her hand over Anne’s.

Sam shook her head. “Wait. I’m not so sure they’ve hurt him yet. We don’t want the police involved, at least not yet.”

“I don’t know, Sam,” Anne said, unconvinced, her index finger still poised over the number nine on the switchboard, eager to dial.

“Anne, don’t you see? That’s why they dumped me off on I-70 at whatever time Friday night. They’d figured no one would find me before Saturday and, as long as the work week was over, it really didn’t matter when anyone found me.”

Anne looked from Sam’s bandaged wrist to meet her eyes. The blue
in Sam’s eyes seemed as dark and intense as an approaching storm. They studied each other a moment.

“Please, Anne,” Sam said. “I expect to hear from them any time.”

Anne pulled her hand away from the switchboard. “I hope you’re right,” she said and sat back hard against her chair. She folded her hands tightly in front of her. “I feel just awful. Here all this time you were in the hospital and I thought Wilson was relaxing under a hot sun on a sandy beach and working on his tan. I just hope he’s okay.”

Sam sighed. She turned and looked over her shoulder toward the editorial department. “I guess I’m going to have to talk to Nick.”

“He’s in a mood,” Anne said rolling her eyes.

Sam collected her briefcase and turned to leave. She stopped and looked again at Anne, thinking a moment before she spoke. “Please don’t say anything, Anne. Let me talk to Nick first.”

Anne nodded as the phone rang, taking away her attention.

Sam walked slowly down the stairs. She stopped at the bottom and scanned the perimeter of the newsroom, cast in semi-darkness. The reporter’s computers were off, as they usually were on Monday mornings when no one had a reason to be in over the weekend. Most reporters came in
late on Mondays because of their respective city council meetings they had to cover that evening. Desk chairs were turned this way and that and the room was silent save for the occasional squelch from the police scanner.

Sam set her briefcase down and unwrapped her scarf from around her neck. She stuffed her hands deep in the pockets of her overcoat as she tried to fight off the sense of doom in the pit of her stomach.

Wilson’s office was straight ahead of her. The door was ajar and though it was dark, the morning light coming through the window brightened that room. Sam could see the loveseat against the wall. She saw the Mexican blanket that Wilson kept draped over the back of the couch. She allowed herself a small smile, remembering the day Wilson used it to cover her. It was the day she had learned the news about Rey Estrada, a Grandview police officer.

It was the morning that Jonathan stopped by the newspaper to tell her that Rey had been killed covering a traffic accident on Kipling Street, just north of Colfax Avenue. In addition to his other duties as a cop, her ex husband was also the public information officer for the Grandview Police Department. It was his job to tell reporters like Sam whatever information he could for a developing news story.

Except the story about Rey was a fabrication, designed to throw Sam off balance, to get her to stop her investigation into the drug smuggling operation. But it wasn’t Sam’s investigation. It had been Robin’s. Robin, with Rey’s help, had been working to expose a drug smuggling operation. Robin had died trying to bring the information to light. Sam was just finishing the business her sister had started.

Sam remembered the day she attended Rey’s funeral, watching Rey’s wife and two little girls following his casket to the front of the church. A promising law enforcement career and a young, happy, fulfilling life cut short by greed and the incomprehensible evil that can live in the hearts of some men.

The police scanner came to life with the disembodied voice of a dispatcher sending a cruiser to the scene of a multi-car accident. It took Sam away from the unsettling thoughts of what had happened to Robin and Rey.

She forced herself to look toward Nick’s office. His light was on and the door was closed. A thin strip of glass that extended
, floor to ceiling, next to the door allowed for a partial view inside the office. Nick was in talking on the telephone, leaning heavily on his elbows. He was sitting away from his desk enough that Sam could see his paunchy stomach protruding over his pants. He was holding a ballpoint pen between the tip of his index finger and thumb and shaking it.

She could feel her lip curling upward in disgust for Nick Weeks. The feeling was mutual. Neither cared for the other and the tones of their dislike and lack of respect weren’t subtle.

Sam knew that Nick thought of her as a has-been, lazy, sloppy reporter. It showed in the assignments he’d throw her way and how he would edit her copy. The outcome of Sam’s big, breaking story, however, did nothing to improve Nick’s opinion of her. Sam’s success with the story only seemed to intensify his anger at her. Several days after her story had published, Sam saw Nick in Wilson’s office. She heard a snippet of his conversation as she was going up the stairs. He told Wilson he thought Sam took too much credit for the story, that it was Robin who had done all the hard work and had paid dearly for it.

She collected her briefcase. She thought about knocking on Nick’s door, to let him know that she was here, but decided to go to her desk. Having to deal with Nick Weeks would come soon enough.

Her desk was at the end of the newsroom, just before the kitchen. The walk through the length of the long, open room gave her time to prepare mentally for her encounter with Nick. The police scanner was alive with a sudden burst of activity. Now the dispatcher’s voice was radioing another cruiser to the same accident.

Before Sam could put down her briefcase, Nick opened his office door. He came as far as the door
jamb and called out to Sam. “In my office,” he said, retreating back inside.