A Scrying Shame (27 page)

Arie backed up until she felt the door at her back.

“Don’t leave,” Dick yelled. “Can’t you see I’m hurt? I need an ambulance.”

“You’re kidding, right? You don’t seriously expect me to get you help.”

“I think I broke my hip.”

Arie snorted. “You mean you’ve fallen, and you can’t get up?”

Relief flowed through her veins like morphine. She lowered the chair but didn’t completely let go. He was a sneaky bastard, and she wouldn’t put it past him to launch off the floor like a horror show serial killer. Arie couldn’t even watch slasher movies, and here she was living one. Again.

“Not so easy and pain-free now, is it, Dick? Do you see what happens when you run with knives?”

Dick snarled and lunged toward Arie. Happily, this wasn’t the movies, and the attempt only served to give him more pain. Much shrieking commenced.

A pounding at the door directly behind her caused Arie to join the chorus for a couple moments, but then she realized the cavalry had finally arrived.

She flung open the door.

“Are they at least charging Riann as an accessory?” Chandra asked.

Her mouth was coated with BBQ sauce from the chicken wings she was gnawing, but Arie’d known her long enough to decode her mumblings. Besides, who was she to judge? She was struggling to keep sauce from dripping down her chest and was pretty sure she had bleu cheese dip smeared all over her cheeks. There weren’t enough napkins in the world to keep up with the mess, but wings were fifty cents on Tuesdays, and there was no way to resist that kind of deal, especially not when they tasted this good.

“Nope,” Arie said when she was finally able to answer Chandra’s question. “Dick said he did it and then refused to give details. He’s got a lawyer now, of course. So does Riann. My theory is she stole the ring from Kelli and then sent it to Brant. She knew how bad everything looked for him already, so she probably figured his having it in his possession would tip the scales. She was almost right.”

Arie reached for her bottle of Leinenkugel and almost slid off her seat. She hated high bar stools. They were made for tall women with lots of leg to flaunt. Being perched so high made Arie feel like a kid left to dangle her feet. Plus, her boobs already made her top-heavy, which threw her balance off.

“But if she knew Dick killed her best friend,” Chandra said, “why would she feel she had to set Brant up?”

“She was afraid.”

Arie thought about the vision that had risen from Riann’s blood—the panic and the guilt.
Had
Riann known? She must have, on some level, anyway. Why else would she feel she had to protect Dick?

A woman in a denim skirt fell against Arie, almost toppling her off the barstool. The chicken wing basket skidded down the bar, but Chandra managed to grab it before it sailed completely off. After apologizing profusely, the woman’s date guided her back to their table. They both laughed.

Chandra returned to the subject. “Okay, I get being afraid. But wouldn’t that just make you want to turn him in more? I mean, how could you live with a murderer?”

“People are weird. O’Shea says by now, she’s almost convinced herself that Brant really did it. If you lie to yourself long enough, you start believing the crap yourself. I don’t think she could admit, even to herself, that Dick killed Marissa and Wyatt. She still can’t. Did you know she’s still living at the lake house?”

“So she’s stuck with facing the truth or leaving her meal ticket? Still doesn’t seem like a hard decision to make.”

“It wouldn’t be for you,” Arie said. “But ever since she was a kid, Riann convinced herself the only way she could survive was to trade herself for a lifestyle. Dick was everything she’d been aiming for her whole life. That’s why it hurt so bad when Marissa started making fun of her and then, worse, started writing a book that would expose her past and make a mockery of what used to be their shared dream.”

The band started playing a cover of Trace Adkins’s “Marry For Money.” The girls looked at each other and laughed. It felt good. Laughter had been scarce lately.

“Speaking of O’Shea . . .” Chandra had a wicked smile on her face and also barbecue sauce, which Arie pointed out. It didn’t deter her friend.

“There isn’t anything to speak of,” Arie said. “He took my statement, but that’s it.”

“Maybe for now, but there was something there. He must be a breast man. Not that there’s any other kind, really, but—”

“He was doing his job.”

Instead of taking offense, Chandra smiled knowingly. This time, she let the subject drop and called the bartender over for another round. She made a face when it arrived: one club soda and another Leinie for Arie. She’d lost the coin toss for designated driver.

“Is your mom talking to you yet?”

“If I speak directly to her, she will answer, but not if it’s about Brant.”

“It’s not your fault he got arrested again. He’s the one who got drunk and made such a ruckus at Kelli’s. I’da called the cops on him, too.”

“I know, but it was in the paper and all. I talked to Brant, though. He’s doing better. He had a lot of questions.”

“I bet. Did you tell him about the visions?”

Arie sighed, then took a swallow of beer. “No. There’s no way he’d be able to wrap his mind around that. I haven’t told anyone in my family.”

I told O’Shea, and look how that turned out.

“You’re probably right, but—” Chandra broke off and grabbed Arie’s arm. “I see him!”

Arie spun toward the dance floor.

And there he was.

Arie gasped. Her sleuthing had finally paid off. He had a leggy blonde on one side and a sultry brunette on the other. They were each vying for his attention, which he seemed content to divide between them equally.

“Good Lord, he’s in a
menage a trois
,” Chandra said, awestruck.

“He is not. He’s dancing with two . . . uh . . . ladies.”

“He just grabbed the blonde’s butt, and the other chick is trying to stick her tongue down his throat.”

“This can’t be happening.” Arie felt light-headed.

The trio spun on the floor, expertly weaving through the other, more conventional dance partners. The man, at least, seemed fairly well known. As they wove in and out of the crowd, several of the other dancers—the men, mostly—made laughing remarks as he passed. Although Arie was too far away to catch the words, it was obvious from the laughter and the tone that the comments were equal parts sexual innuendo and that strange form of male respect that displayed itself in coarse innuendo.

The turquoise boots never missed a step.

“Your grandpa’s a stud,” Chandra said.

Arie gagged and turned away.

“Chandra, if you value our friendship, you will never say that again.”

“Okay, what if he decides to bring one of them home tonight? Or both? They’re looking really frisky together.”

Arie put a hand to her throat and swallowed. She had a choice: switch to 7 Up and try to calm her heaving stomach, or drown all thought in alcohol.

What the hell?
Chandra was driving. She caught the bartender’s eye.

“Give me a shot of Jagermeister, and don’t walk away.”

The shot didn’t help. Neither did the next two Leines that followed. To make matters worse, Arie’s eyes kept being drawn back to the spectacle of her grandfather and his two babes. Eventually, she was able to look past him enough to notice the babes in question were only about twenty years younger than their escort, making them all eligible for Medicaid, should the need arise.

It also became obvious that any one of the three would have been able to dance Arie under the table—if she knew how to dance, that is.

“They’re pretty amazing, aren’t they?” Arie said over her shoulder to Chandra.

“I would say so,” a low voice rumbled in her ear.

She knew that voice.

The band swung into Josh Turner’s “Your Man.” A hand reached down, took hers, and tugged her toward the dance floor. As he pulled her close, she finally looked up. O’Shea’s brilliant blue eyes were laughing into her own.

“How did you—?” Flustered, Arie broke off. Maybe he hadn’t known she would be here. After all, Bootz was forty-five minutes away from Oconomowoc. She herself had only come here to track down her wayward grandfather. There was no reason to think—

“A little bird told me,” he whispered in her ear.

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The Enemy We Know

The One We Love

The Secrets We Keep

The Blood We Spill

COMING SOON:
The Lies We Tell

A Scrying Shame

COMING SOON:
Scry Me a River

The Enemy We Know: A Letty Whittaker 12-Step Mystery

Book One

I heard him coming. The hall funneled the sound of his rage, racing just ahead of the man. Our clinic’s manager screamed, “Letty! Watch out!” but he already filled the doorway. Despite training, I leaped to my feet. Waves of booze and the clamor of civilized people fumbling in the throes of chaos seeped around his mass. In the distance, the thud of running feet, objects careening into each other, and panicked versions of “what’s going on?” littered the air.

After the first instinctive reaction, my training reasserted itself, and I recognized the intruder as a client I’d just begun seeing. Now he stood swaying on the threshold, jean jacket straining at the shoulders, barely covering a ratty T-shirt which offered sexual favors to my sister. His bleary, pig-mean eyes stared straight through me. So different from the shy, hurting man I’d met with a week ago.

We’d met together twice for counseling. Despite an initial complaint of marital conflict, Randy had kept the focus squarely on a seemingly trivial dispute with his boss. At the time, I’d thought he was avoiding the real issue, but we were still getting to know each other. Any attempt on my part to bring the subject back to his troubled marriage was charmingly, but firmly, deflected. Maybe he was ready to talk.

He slammed the office door so hard I flinched and bit my tongue.
Maybe not
.

“Where is she?” The dead monotone scared me more than if he’d yelled.

“Who?”

“You
bitch
.” His teeth chewed at the word, turning his face into a lupine grimace. “You think this is a joke?” He pulled a hunting knife out from under his jacket, moving deeper into the room, still blocking the door.

“No, Randy,” I said, eyes locked on the weapon. My voice sounded high and thin, squeaking past my closed throat, a far cry from the professional calm I wished for. “I don’t think this is a joke. I can see how upset you are, but I don’t know what you want.”

“I want Carrie to stop this bullshit. Get that? Real simple. And I want
you
out of our lives.
Where is she?
”

It was hard to think. All the oxygen pumping from my thudding heart seemed directed to my extremities. My legs tingled in helplessness; flight was impossible.

My mind scrambled to mesh together the bits of information from our sessions with what he was saying now. “I thought your wife’s name is Debbie?”

“What?”

“Debbie?”

“Don’t play stupid with me. You knew the whole time, didn’t you? You knew why I was here, and you played me for a fool. You think I don’t know? The whole time you’re yapping about trust, and you and that bitch are setting me up behind my back.”

“Randy—”

“My name ain’t Randy!” he exploded. “Quit pretending.”

It finally sunk in that “Randy” had given me a fake name. So much for trust. I jettisoned any information gleaned from our previous sessions and pretended he was just an irrational stranger—which he was—leaving very little to go on. Just a name, really. The name of the woman I was supposedly conspiring with: Carrie.

It clicked.

Carrie, the client usually scheduled in this time slot, had canceled at the last minute. She and I had been working for the last four months on self-esteem issues, gathering her courage to deal with her relationship with her abusive boyfriend. She’d recently decided to get out and had begun making practical plans for her escape.

Guess who showed up?

His eyes darted around the room, hyperalert, as if he thought I had her stashed in the file cabinet. My office held an old metal desk, an ergonomically challenged chair, a tattered love seat, and a waist-high, two-drawer file cabinet
sans
escaping girlfriend.