After She's Gone (24 page)

“It’s . . . it’s . . .” Hud’s hind end still gyrated, as the shepherd gazed expectantly up at her. She leaned down to pat his damp head, smiling at the eager dog. “Not your fault.”

“I’ll get your clothes clean,” Trent apologized.

“Truly, it’s fine.”

“Sorry, he’s an escape artist. Hud is really short for Houdini. I’m guessing that Shorty, my ranch hand who was watching the place, must’ve left the garage door open. Come on.” He whistled to the dog and headed toward the garage where a side door was ajar and through which they entered the house. It was two steps into a screened-in porch that led to a back door and oversize kitchen. Following a step behind, Cassie waited while he toweled off the dog and checked to make sure there was water in Hud’s large dish.

“This way,” Trent told her as he headed down a short hallway wedged between the staircase and the front door to a small closet. From an upper shelf, he hauled out a rolled sleeping bag and pillow. “I’m not overly supplied with sheets and things. Just moved in a while back, about the time I got the dog.”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“You’re sure you don’t want to sleep upstairs?”

“You’ve got guest rooms?”

A slow smile spread over his jaw. “There’s no furniture in them. I was thinking that since we’re still married, you might want to stay with me.”

She saw the amusement in his eyes. He
knew
she’d never take that step. “Maybe another time,” she said, and couldn’t believe it actually sounded as if she were flirting.

“Okay.”

Little did he know how tempted she was. It had been so long since she’d slept beside him, heard his deep breathing, felt the weight of his arm flung across her waist, or nestled against the warmth of his naked body, long and lean, spooned up against her. An ache started to swell deep inside her, but before she could change her mind and take him up on his offer, he said, “Suit yourself,” then carried the sleeping bag into a den off the front hallway.

“Two options,” he said. “The couch there is long enough for you to stretch out on, or that chair in the corner actually folds out to a single bed.”

“Don’t bother with the fold-out. I won’t be here that long.”

He tossed the bedding onto the leather divan, then bent on one knee near a wood stove and lit the kindling already stacked inside. “There’s a remote for the TV on the table near the chair.” As the paper and kindling caught fire, he hooked a thumb toward the back of the house. “Bathroom’s around the corner. Should be towels and everything you need in there.”

“Thanks.”

As the flames started to crackle, a warm glow emanating through the glass door of the stove, he glanced over his shoulder and his gaze touched hers. In a quicksilver instant she remembered another time when they’d gone to the mountains, had secreted themselves into an isolated cabin where he’d lit a fire in a huge rock fireplace and they’d made love for hours in front of the rising flames. She swallowed hard and, as if he’d shared the same intimate memory, he straightened and cleared his throat.

She almost blurted out that she was sorry for how far they’d come from the time when they’d been so much in love, but before she could form the words, he said, “I’m gonna run outside, check on the stock. Be back in a few.”

Whistling to the dog once more, he headed for the front door.

She walked to the window, stared through the rain sliding down the panes, and was reminded of another night, not that long ago when she was looking outside her hospital room to the night beyond.

It seemed like a lifetime ago.

And now she was here. Alone with Trent. Her marriage crumbling. Her sister still missing. One friend murdered, another nearly killed. She was too tired to make sense of it now, so she unzipped her bag and tossed her pajamas onto the couch. She dug past a makeup case for her toothbrush, which wasn’t in the usual pocket where she’d always kept it packed. Nor was her e-reader in its spot. Certain she’d just packed the items in one of the myriad pockets, she opened the case that held her laptop and there, on top of the slim computer, was a slick piece of paper with something attached to it.

“What the devil?” she said as she tugged on the laminated paper. It slid out and she found herself staring down at a warped picture of her sister. “Oh my God.” Her heart stilled and a newfound horror consumed her.

The photograph was hideous. Allie’s eyes had been cut out, as if they’d been gouged, but the face, even distorted, was recognizable as that of Jenna Hughes’s daughter. A thin strap of elastic was attached to the face in the back, as if the disturbing thing were a mask.

No! No! No!
Cassie gasped and dropped the disfigured photo as if it burned her. As it fluttered to the floor it turned slightly to reveal the back where a horrid damning word, scribbled hastily in red, was visible:

“What?” Horrified, she backed up, putting distance between herself and the evil, twisted image. Her heart was pounding, her mind whirling, her stomach churning. How had the horrid thing ended up in her bag? Who had planted it there? Why, oh, God, why? She was breathing rapidly, her heart pounding in her brain, her skin crawling at the thought that someone had actually been in her apartment, had gone through her things, had hidden the mask in her laptop case. She felt the world go dark and leaned against the wall. With an effort she forced a calm that was against her very nature. The intruder had come into her home to do this . . . whatever it was. A warning? A threat? The cat had followed him and been locked inside when he’d left. Who would be so heartless, so cruel, so insidious to do this?

A door opened and she jumped about a foot. Trent walked into the house, his dog tagging behind. He found her with a hand pressed to her chest, her heart a drum, a newfound fear congealing in her blood

“Cass?” he said, his brows furrowing. “Are you okay? I thought for sure that you’d already be asleep by now and—”

She launched herself at him. Without thinking she let out a broken sob and flung herself into his arms.

“Hey.”

Squeezing her eyes shut, she refused to cry but she held on fast. Desperately attempting to find some equilibrium, some stability in her unstable life, she drank in the solid male scent of him, felt the strength of his body as he held her, his breath ruffling over her hair.

“What’s going on?” he asked. She shook her head but he must’ve looked over her head into the room and spied the mask because she heard his sharp intake of breath and felt him stiffen. A second passed and then he said, “What the hell is
that?”

 

S
he spent what was left of the early morning in Trent’s bed, lying in his arms, telling herself she was falling into a trap, surprised that he’d not tried to kiss or touch her other than to hold her close. She hadn’t undressed. The streaks of mud from Hud’s eager greeting had dried on her clothes, and she hadn’t given them a second thought. She’d struggled to fall asleep with Trent beside her, though, so it took till morning light was beginning to touch the bare windows before she’d drifted off. When she finally opened her eyes, she saw on the bedside clock it was nearly ten and Trent wasn’t with her, the sheets on the spot of the bed where he’d lain cool to her touch.

In a flash, she remembered the hideous poster or mask or whatever it was and forced herself not to dwell on it, not let the evil piece of art consume her. “One day at a time,” she told herself and pushed off the warm bed.

After a quick trip to the bathroom, she hurried downstairs. The dog was lying on a rug near the wood stove where a fire still burned. As she walked into the room, Hud lifted his head and thumped his tail. “Yeah, you see this?” she teased, pointing to her dirt-smeared pants. Unconcerned, Hud stretched and got to his feet. Quickly she eyed the cozy room. Her bag was still open, but it was now near the couch, and the sleeping bag, along with the horrid mask, was nowhere to be seen.

Following the scents of brewed coffee and fried bacon, she found Trent seated at the kitchen table. His damp hair had been combed, his jaw clean-shaven, his jeans as disreputable as ever, an unbuttoned flannel shirt tossed over a dark T-shirt.

On the table in front of him were a cup of coffee, her cell phone, the red earring, and the dreadful mask. Allie’s ghostlike image lay face up, the table’s scratched wood surface showing through the empty eye sockets.

“Mornin’,” he drawled, looking up as she entered with the dog in tow.

“Oh, God, what is that doing here?” She pointed to the mask.

“Couldn’t throw it out.” He scraped his chair back. “Coffee?”

Her stomach turned over and she shook her head. “Maybe water first.”

He found a glass in a cupboard that was filled with mismatched kitchenware and filled it from the tap, then handed it to her.

“What’re you doing with my phone and that . . . that thing?” she asked again, taking a sip of water and gesturing to the distorted picture.

“We need to get to the bottom of what’s going on.” After refilling his cup from a pot still warming in the coffeemaker, he pulled another mug from a shelf and filled it, then placed both cups on the table. “Then we have to talk to the police.” He looked at the mask. “How do you think that got into your bag?”

Setting the water glass aside, she picked up the chipped mug that held her coffee. She explained how she thought someone had placed it in her bag when she’d been out, how she’d felt someone had been inside her apartment and that the cat had been trapped inside, and finished with, “. . . before the hospital, I’d been going back and forth from Portland to LA during the filming of
Dead Heat,
so I’d never really emptied my bags. I didn’t check to see what was inside before I packed, just threw in some more clothes and personal stuff, things I thought I’d need. Unless someone was in my apartment another time that I don’t know about, that’s when it happened.” She looked out the window over the sink. Dark clouds roiled over the forested hills surrounding the ranch, but the rain had stopped, at least for now. “What about my phone? What’re you doing with it?” she asked.

“Snooping, obviously.”

She saw that he was kidding around, trying to lighten the mood. Cocking an eyebrow, she waited, silently suggesting he explain.

“I think you should call your doctor again. See if she texted you.”

She took another swallow. He was right. Of course. Before she could change her mind, she dialed and waited. One ring. Two. Voice mail picked up and Cassie forced herself to leave a simple message. “Dr. Sherling, this is Cassie Kramer. Please call me back.” She left her number and clicked off. “Mission accomplished.”

“Not until you actually speak with her. Even then we’ll have a lot more to do.” He went to the stove and opened the oven door. The scents of bacon and fresh bread erupted. Cassie’s stomach growled. “Let’s start with breakfast.”

For once, she didn’t argue.

 

Standing in the living room of Cassie Kramer’s LA apartment, Rhonda Nash did a slow burn. The place, obviously, had been left in a hurry. There were a few clothes left in the bedroom closet, a couple sweaters tossed onto the bed, and the trash, what little there was of it, hadn’t been taken out. Some mail, mostly junk, was scattered on a small desk. The bed hadn’t been made. It was as if Cassie Kramer had gotten a call in the middle of the night and blown town, which wasn’t exactly what had happened according to the landlord. Still, it was becoming more evident by the second that Nash’s trip to California might have been, if not a wild goose chase, then too little, too late. The apartment was in minor disarray and, if the landlord were to be believed, Cassie Kramer had barely touched down before she’d fled LA, as quickly as possible. From what Detective Nash could determine, she’d been in California just long enough to ask questions about her sister, ruffle some feathers, then race out. Cassie had been seen with Holly Dennison the night before the set designer’s murder and she was still a person of interest in her sister’s disappearance. If nothing else, she was guilty of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. As she eyed the living room and bedroom of the apartment, Detective Nash wondered if Allie Kramer’s sister’s culpability ran a little deeper than that.

“She said she was going back to Oregon for a while. Didn’t know exactly when she’d return, but wanted to keep the apartment,” Doug Peterson had told her. Pushing seventy, with thinning white hair and a bit of a paunch, Peterson owned the large home on the property and rented out this little apartment.

Currently, Peterson was hovering on the tiny front porch and holding a black cat while stroking its fur and keeping an eye on Nash and Hayes as they poked around. He didn’t set foot in the apartment, just hung near the open door. She sensed he wanted them to leave things be, but didn’t have the guts to take on the police. “She’s been a good tenant, Cassie has,” he said. “Quiet for the most part. Respectful of the property. Always pays on time. Even when she isn’t in town.”

Yeah, yeah, Cassie Kramer is effin’ fantastic,
Nash thought sourly, but kept her opinions to herself. “Good to know.”

She’d already seen Holly Dennison’s corpse and the mask that had been left at the crime scene. She’d talked to the LA techs and cops who’d been at the scene, but had spent most of her morning with Jonas Hayes who had brought her up to date on his investigation.

Glancing around the apartment one last time, she figured her next move was to have another face-to-face with Allie Kramer’s sister.

And she hoped to do it in Oregon, if that’s where she’d flown.

 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Virginia Sherling insisted across the wireless connection. “I never texted you. I don’t text.” There was irritation in the doctor’s voice.

“Could someone else have?” Cassie asked. She was standing on the porch off of Trent’s back door and staring at the dreary day. The sky was gun-metal gray, the clouds low. Cattle lumbered in the fields separated from other pastures where horses plucked at the grass. A cool wind slipped through the screens, to tug at Cassie’s hair.

“My phone is always with me or in my office or my house, so I don’t see how.” Her tone changed. “How’re you doing, Cassie?” Was there an undercurrent beneath the solicitous tones, a hint that Dr. Sherling thought she was making up the story about the texts?

“I’m fine.”

“That’s good to hear.” Again, Cassie sensed a falseness to the psychiatrist’s words. “I think it might be a good idea if we had a session. I’d like to hear how you’re doing, what you’re working on, where your life is heading. Your thoughts on everything. You did leave abruptly.”

“I’ll call you,” Cassie said. “Right now, I don’t have time, but thank you. Good-bye.” She hung up before the doctor could say anything else.

“Not her?” Trent asked, as she stepped inside.

“No.”

“I have a theory,” he said slowly, his gaze careful, his eyebrows drawing together as they always did when he was thinking.

“All right . . .” she responded cautiously.

“The kid who knows all the stats? Rinko? What if he got hold of the doctor’s phone and texted you quickly, then erased the message so Doctor Sherling wouldn’t find out.”

“The message about Santa Fe?”

“He knows everything about sports and cars, right? That’s what you said and he sure as hell knew every detail about my truck. He’d spied it in the lot at the hospital and figured it belonged to me.”

“That sounds like Rinko,” she said. “He’s amazing.”

“Okay. So maybe Santa Fe isn’t about the city, but about the car, an SUV. And the 07 is the model year of the car. Maybe he’s talking about a 2007 Hyundai Santa Fe.”

“That’s kind of a stretch,” she said, but felt as if she’d stepped into a time warp. How many times, while she was in the hospital, had Rinko gone on and on about the cars he’d seen in the parking lot? He knew what type of car each member of the staff drove and remarked when one of the nurses, aides, or doctors came in something new, or a loaner or their spouse’s vehicle. With his near-photographic memory, Rinko could remember most vehicles that had ever wheeled onto the tree-lined lot of Mercy Hospital.

“It could be. But what does it mean?” she asked. “An SUV made in Korea?”

“The vehicle was unusual, probably. My guess is it wasn’t normally in the lot, or he wouldn’t have felt compelled to send the text. I’m guessing it might belong to your nightmare nurse, the one who dropped her earring.” He carried his cup to the sink and added it to a stack of breakfast dishes. “Why don’t we go talk to Rinko?”

She withered inside at the thought of returning to the hospital. She was certain to run into someone who would alert Dr. Sherling that she was on the premises.

“Come on,” Trent said, and he was already reaching for his jacket. “We’ll make the rounds. First to visit Jenna, assure her you’re all right, then to Rinko to have a little chat with him, see what else he might be able to tell us about the Santa Fe.”

“If that’s what it is.”

“Easy to find out.”

She recalled that Trent had been in military intelligence, though his stint in the army had lasted less than five years and had occurred before he’d met Cassie. “If I have to I can call one of the guys who was in the army with me. He ended up with his own detective agency. High tech. He has connections with the police.”

“Don’t tell my stepfather. He thinks everything should go through the proper channels.”

“For once I agree with Carter. That is, until the channels are clogged. After talking to Rinko, I think we’d better go to the police station to visit Nash and show off the fun gift that was left in your suitcase.”

Her good mood evaporated at the thought of seeing the detective. “Nash thinks I did it, you know. That somehow I made Allie disappear.”

“Maybe the mask will change her mind.”

“She’ll probably think I was behind it as well.”

“Maybe they can get some prints off it.”

“Let’s hope. But . . . let’s not let Mom know that someone was in my apartment and left it there. She’d freak.” She thought of Jenna and how she’d become paranoid for her children after the trauma that had occurred ten years earlier.

“She’s going to find out soon enough.”

“No . . . I don’t think that’s such a good idea.”

“Then at least let me talk to Shane.”

“He’s not your biggest fan,” Cassie reminded him.

“I know, but let’s pull him in. He’s an ex-sheriff who still has major connections with the department. He can decide how much your mom can handle.”

She hesitated, but at least she knew she could trust her stepfather. Unlike Detective Nash, he didn’t think she was a suspect in her sister’s disappearance. “Deal.”

Trent smiled and gave her a wink. His grin was infectious and despite the trauma of recent days, Cassie returned it even though the last place on earth she wanted to be was anywhere near the Portland Police Department, well, unless you counted Mercy Hospital. But he had a point. “Okay,” she acquiesced. “Fine. I’ll go to the hospital and we’ll talk to Carter, but I’d like to avoid dealing with Detective Nash as long as possible. That woman has it in for me.”

Before he could argue, she added, “Just give me time to walk through the shower and change. Fifteen minutes and then we’ll go.”

“That’s my girl,” he said automatically, then caught himself.

His words burned in her brain. As cozy as being here with him had been, as comfortable as the ride from California had turned out to be, she was definitely
not
his girl or woman.

But she was still his wife.

 

The pregnancy test was negative.

Again.

Sitting on the edge of her bathtub, Jenna Hughes decided she was done with the whole baby-making idea. Maybe God was telling her that she was too old, that she should be satisfied that she had healthy children who now were grown women. For a second she thought of Allie, still missing, and Cassie, who had so recently been a patient in a mental ward. She clenched her hands into fists, worried enough about them and probably didn’t need a new baby in the mix.

Still, it was hard to accept.

Yes, she was no longer a young woman. She’d passed forty a few years earlier, but it was hard to give up the dream of sharing a child with Shane. Now, glancing in the mirror, she saw a feathering of small lines near her eyes that hadn’t been there a few years earlier, and there was more than one silvery thread stubbornly showing in her black hair.