After She's Gone (17 page)

Whitney grabbed on to the open driver’s window. “I thought you might want to tell your side of the story. You know, what happened then. What’s happening now. I’m going to run it, you know, as I’ve already started airing my investigation. So, with or without your input the story will air, but I would love to hear what you think, to try and work with you.”

“I have nothing to say.” She jabbed her key into the ignition.

The car started but Whitney was still hanging on. “The police questioned you for hours. You were reportedly the last person to see your sister before she disappeared. And it’s common knowledge that you two had your ups and downs.”

Cassie tried to keep her cool, but the woman was irritating the hell out of her and the cameraman had positioned himself so that if she backed up, she might hit him. “How long have you been following me? How did you know that I’d be here? Now. In this park?”

A tiny muscle worked in the reporter’s jaw. “I was going to talk to you at your house and I got there just as you were leaving so—”

“You know where I live?”

“Of course.”

Cassie mentally reviewed the stops she’d made before landing here. “You followed me to the post office and through the coffee drive-in . . . For God’s sake—” She snapped. “All the way from Portland to LA? You’re unbelievable.” She glanced at the hulk who was blocking her exit. “Get out of my way and leave me the hell alone.” Before waiting for an answer, she shoved her Honda into reverse. “You’d better move,” she told the cameraman.

“I know you want to find out what happened to your sister,” Whitney pleaded. “I do, too.”

“For a story.”

“Maybe we could help each other.”

“Tell your boy there to watch out. I’m not stopping.”

Whitney was still talking as Cassie rolled up her window and eased backward, certain her back tire would roll over the toe of the big galoot’s boot. Well, tough. She kept reversing. At the last second the cameraman moved slightly away, and she kept right on backing up until she could maneuver her car around the bastard. “Idiot,” she muttered under her breath as she tore out of the lot.

She didn’t know if she was talking about Whitney Stone, the man with the shoulder cam, or herself.

 

“I
, um . . . I don’t suppose there’s any word. About Allie Kramer, I mean.” Her eyes wide, the girl behind the antique cash register at the hardware store looked up at Trent expectantly. She had layered red hair, a turned up nose spattered with freckles and braces, and she smiled a bit anxiously as she handed him his sack of nails, his receipt, and change.

“I haven’t heard.” He stood on the worn floorboards at the counter in Bart’s Hardware, an iconic Falls Crossing establishment that had sat on Main Street for over a hundred years. Inside, labyrinthine corridors were lined with shelves that climbed to the ceiling, accessed by dusty, rolling ladders and holding containers of just about any hardware known to man in the past century or two. Some of the tools on display were probably older than the gray-haired men who still played checkers, poker, and traded insults around a wood stove in the barnlike building’s basement.

“So, you don’t know if she’s okay? She’s like a local celebrity, y’know?”

He did. Oh, how he did.

“I mean like a really big star. From here! Can you believe it? Falls Crossing?” She sighed. “
Nothing
ever happens here, but Allie Kramer grew up here, went to the same schools I did. You know, Harrington? I probably, like, sat in the same desk she did. I saw her picture in one of the old yearbooks. It’s soooo awesome.”

The girl was practically swooning, which was ridiculous when considering Allie Kramer’s personality, which, of course, was at odds with any of her on-screen personas. Allie Kramer was
not
like any of the heroines she portrayed so convincingly on-screen.

“Yeah,” he agreed, scooping up the change she’d laid on the scarred counter. “But really, I don’t know anything about what happened to her.” He folded the ones into his wallet.

“I thought. I mean, I heard from like everybody, that you’re married to . . .” Her eyebrows pulled together in confusion as if maybe her information was faulty. “You were married to her sister, I thought. Casey.”

“Cassie.”

Her head bobbed in agreement. “Cassie. She was in some movies, too, I think. I never saw any of them.”

Not a lot of people had, he thought.

“I watched Whitney Stone, y’know? She’s reporting on it on TV, but—” She shrugged her slim shoulders. “She didn’t really say anything. So you don’t know what happened to her? Allie, I mean.” Disappointment clouded her big eyes.

How many times did he have to say it? He slid his wallet into the back pocket of his jeans. “That’s right.” He smiled through clenched teeth. The girl at the counter meant no harm—she was just curious—but he was sick to death of questions about Allie’s disappearance, his estranged wife, her mental condition, and the whole damned circus surrounding both of them. For the love of Christ, he’d even gotten calls from the press himself, none of which he’d taken, but they bothered him just the same.

It was like stepping into a field of nettles with no way out . . . you just kept getting stung over and over again.

Worse yet, he’d fought his gut instinct to find Cassie—take the next flight or drive the whole damned sixteen hours straight to LA. He was still fighting it.

Carrying his small sack of roofing staples and nails, he made his way out of the store. “Son of a bitch,” he muttered under his breath as the door closed sharply behind him.

The air outside was heavy with the threat of more rain, gray clouds hanging low. Whitecaps churned on the dark water of the Columbia, while the streets of Falls Crossing were still wet and shimmering from an earlier cloudburst. Trent turned his collar to the wind and made his way to his truck, where Hud was waiting. Bouncing on the driver’s seat, his head out the open window, the dog spied Trent and let out an enthusiastic yip.

“Yeah, glad to see you, too,” Trent said as he opened the door. Tail wagging wildly, Hud hopped onto the passenger seat.

It had been ten minutes since Trent had left the dog alone and the shepherd acted as if he’d been waiting for years.

Another sharp yip.

“Settle down, boy.” Scratching Hud behind his ears, he added, “Let’s go home.” The words echoed through his mind and for a second he hesitated, key in position over the ignition as a memory sizzled through his brain, a white-hot image of Cassie, after two glasses of wine, draping her arm around his shoulders, rising on tiptoes and whispering those same words.

They’d been married barely a month and had gone to a restaurant in Malibu for dinner and drinks at an outdoor table where they were able to watch the sun settle into the Pacific. Before the check came, Cassie kicked off one sandal and beneath the table had inched her bare toes up his leg. He’d immediately felt his damned cock harden and had sent her a warning glare. But her mischievous gaze had met his and she’d whispered in a sultry voice, “I love you, you know, Trent Kittle. So let’s go home and do something about it.”

He’d left cash, including an overly generous tip, on the table, taken her hand, and they’d wended their way quickly through the tables packed tightly onto the patio. Once in the car, Trent had ignored the speed limit. When they’d reached their apartment she’d taken off before he’d put the car into park and, laughing, led him through the garden and front door. He’d chased after his wife as she ran into their unit and through their small apartment, both of them laughing and tossing off their clothes on the way to the bedroom, where he’d caught her, pulled her close, and kissed her with a fervor he’d never felt with any other woman. It had been ninety degrees in the apartment, only a fan to move the air, but they hadn’t cared. They’d tumbled onto the bed, half-dressed and entwined, somehow managing to peel off the remainder of their clothing and make love until long after midnight.

His muscles tensed at the memory and even now, seeing her in his mind’s eye, her streaked hair wet from perspiration, her breathing rapid, her eyes dilated in the darkened room, he felt an erection in the making.

Annoyed, he turned his thoughts away from his missing wife.

Jabbing his key into the ignition, Trent switched on the engine, then he backed out of the badly marked space and put the Ford into drive. He hit the gas a little too hard. The truck leaped forward and he eased off the pedal as he nosed his pickup into the heart of Falls Crossing, the Oregon town he’d called home except for his brief stint in LA. Traffic was light along a street where retail stores and offices were crowded together, windowed storefronts lining the sidewalks, pedestrians dashing under awnings to protect them from the rain that had begun to spit from the dark sky. Turning on the windshield wipers, he only had to slow to a stop at one intersection where, while his truck idled, he checked his cell phone.

No one had called him, which wasn’t a surprise. He told himself it didn’t bother him that Cassie hadn’t phoned him back; he hadn’t really expected her to. But deep down, in a place he refused to acknowledge, he had hoped she would reach out to him, had wanted to hear her voice and determine for himself if she was okay. He slid the phone onto the console and waited for the light to change, then drove out of town.

Cassie was still his wife, at least legally, and he still worried about her. No matter how many times he reminded himself that she’d walked out on him, wouldn’t listen to his excuses, explanations, or reasons, just called him a “stupid ass son of a bitch,” before leaving him and moving out permanently, he couldn’t completely eradicate her from his thoughts.

The phone calls and visits he’d attempted to make after their last fight had been ignored or rejected, even after the accident on the set of
Dead Heat
and her sister’s disappearance.

While the dog kept his nose to the cracked window and the town gave way to farmland, Trent told himself that he should just leave well enough alone. Cassie had made it more than clear that he should back off. His jaw tightened as he remembered how he’d panicked upon hearing that an actress had been shot while filming a final scene for
Dead Heat
. He’d flipped out, fearing for Cassie’s life, only to discover that the victim had not been either his wife or his sister-in-law. For a second he’d felt relief, then he’d learned Allie had disappeared.

Once more he’d tried to reach Cassie, but she hadn’t returned his texts or calls. So he’d decided enough was enough, that he needed to talk to her in person, to actually set eyes on her and hopefully get some answers. He’d driven to her hotel in Portland to no avail. She’d left specific instructions with the management and staff of the hotel to allow no one, not even her husband, to know her room number. No information about her was to be mentioned to anyone.

Insisting on seeing her had proved impossible and a real pisser, his arguments with the receptionist escalating to the point that he’d been threatened with being forcefully escorted by security to the street and the police contacted. Grudgingly he’d given up. He’d stood in the cold rain and stared angrily upward at the tall edifice and thought that he’d caught a glimpse of her on the balcony of a room on an upper floor. His eyes had narrowed but he’d been jostled by a threesome of teenagers half running down the sidewalk. “Hey, look out, man,” one of the boys had grumbled as they’d passed, and for a second Trent’s concentration had been broken. When he looked up again, he realized he’d been mistaken. Cassie wasn’t standing on the balcony. He’d only seen the play of light and shadow and a curtain moving inside an open sliding door. He’d conjured up her image. Of course she hadn’t been outside in the rain.

He’d left then, but hadn’t been satisfied, especially when within two days of Allie’s disappearance, amid rumors that Cassie was the last person to see her alive and was considered a person of interest in the missing person’s case, rumors had swirled that Cassie had checked herself into Mercy Hospital. He’d called, of course, and once again had run up against the wall of her privacy. She’d refused to communicate with him in any way, shape, or form.

After six or seven phone calls to various people, including the hospital administrative staff and her mother, who also hadn’t been able to get him through to Cassie, he’d once again driven to Portland. As he’d wound up the tree-lined street that led to Mercy Hospital he’d told himself this time he wasn’t going to take “no” for an answer.

So thinking, he’d determinedly walked through the front doors and asked for a visitor’s pass. The receptionist had been a stout woman whose gray roots showed in her flat, black hair and whose chin and jaw had disappeared into her neck. Seated at a desk, she’d looked over the tops of her rimless glasses when he’d stated that he was there to visit Cassie Kramer. With a frigid smile, she’d pleasantly but firmly refused him entrance. Even pulling the “I’m her husband” card hadn’t worked.

She’d made it very clear that he’d been persona non grata.

He’d then asked that someone tell Cassie he was waiting and had camped out in the waiting area of the hospital, while he had leafed distractedly through an out-of-date magazine filled with last year’s summer salad recipes and beach getaway ideas while the wintry rain sheeted down the windows.

As he’d thumbed past what had to be the fifth article on weight loss, a teenage boy with wild blond hair and bad skin had approached him.

Trent had looked up.

The kid, in khakis and a long-sleeved Yankees T-shirt, had announced, “She says, ‘Go away.’ ”

“Pardon?” Trent had dropped his magazine. “Who said, ‘Go away’?”

“You’re looking for Cassie,” the boy had said and it wasn’t a question. “She doesn’t want to talk to you and you should go away.”

“And you are?”

“Steven. Steven L. Rinko,” the kid had said. “The
L
stands for Leon. He was my grandpop. He’s dead now.”

“I’m sorry.”

Unblinking eyes had stared at him. “Why? Did you know him?”

“No, I’m sure I didn’t.”

“Then you couldn’t be sorry.”

“I guess not. It’s just what people say.”

“So they’re liars because they can’t be sorry.” He’d shrugged with the innocence of a child telling the simple truth.

Deciding the conversation was going nowhere, Trent had clarified, “So ‘Cassie’? Cassie Kramer? She told you to give me the message?”

“That’s what I already told you. She said, ‘Go away,’” he’d repeated without expression and only the merest hint of irritation in his voice.

“Look . . . Steven—”

“Steven L. Rinko. The
L
is for Leon. He was my grandpop. He’s dead.”

“I know, but you tell her—Cassie—I’m not going anywhere that—”

“You drive the truck?” Rinko had walked to the window and stared outside to the parking area where Trent’s pickup was one of the few in the lot. “Eighty-six Ford-150 half-ton?”

“That’s right.”

He’d looked over his shoulder to pin Trent in his gaze. “ ’Course it is,” he said flatly. “Bad mileage. Sometimes not enough power. Paint job can be a problem. Most owners say they are satisfied.”

“Most owners?”

“Yes.”

Who was this kid?

Before he’d been able to ask, the boy had nodded curtly, as if agreeing with himself, then slipped through a side door marked
NO ADMITTANCE.
When Trent had tried following Rinko, he found the door was locked and all he got for his trouble of pushing repeatedly on the lever was a rattling noise and the evil eye from the receptionist. Pursing her lips she slowly shook her head in disapproval and actually made little tsking sounds.

He’d left the building then.

But he’d been foolish enough to sit in his parked truck and stare up at the windows of the hospital as he’d wondered in which room she’d taken up residence.

She really hadn’t wanted to see him.