After She's Gone (45 page)

A long, low moan ripped through the building.

She thought of Trent. No, it couldn’t be.

But her fear drove her upward.

Fighting the pain in her shoulder, dragging herself upward, rung by rung she climbed. She had to make it! She had to get to him! At the opening, she peered through and, saw a body on the floor. Her heart collapsed. Was it Trent? Allie?

Standing over the wounded person her back to the opening was a woman, while holding a gun pointed at the already wounded victim. Jesus God, the shooter was Allie, her victim Laura Merrick! With the hideous mask half-on, half-off her face, Laura writhed on the floor and groaned in agony. Allie aimed her gun at Laura’s ever moving forehead, as if she were planning to shoot her literally right between her eyes.

Cassie coiled, then sprang, propelling herself through the opening and rolling, knocking Allie off her feet. The gun went flying, skittering across the floor.

Lithe as a cat, she pounced on the gun, then rolled over and agilely hopped to her feet. The girl who had once been a nerdy bookworm, then a famous Hollywood star and then a ghost, vanishing without a trace was now a cold-blooded killer?

“Allie?” Cassie whispered as her sister pointed the gun at her. “Allie!”

Allie’s hands wobbled. Her eyes were wide, her expression cold.

“Don’t shoot!” Cassie yelled. “Allie!”

Ashen faced, thin as a rail, her eyes hollow, as if she didn’t recognize Cassie, Allie hesitated.

“Allie, it’s me. Cassie. Your sister.”

Heavy footsteps thundered toward them, but Allie didn’t seem to hear, just stood over Cassie.

“Drop it!” Shane’s voice boomed through the room. “Allie Kramer! Drop your weapon.” Then his voice softened. “For the love of God, what happened?” His jaw clenched, a muscle jumping, and for a second Cassie witnessed his pain. He’d thought of Jenna’s daughters as his own. As quickly as his bewilderment appeared, it disappeared and he slipped back into his lawman persona once more.

In a daze, Allie looked away and in that instant, Cassie sprang. She ripped the gun from her sister’s fingers. Without thinking she threw the damned weapon through the opening to the silo. “What the hell are you doing?” she thundered raging at her sister. “You idiot! We all thought you were dead!”

“I am,” Allie said, as if she really were a zombie.

“What? Don’t give me that!” Cassie roared, incited.

“Cass, it’s okay.” Shane tried to step in.

But Cassie wasn’t finished. “Where have you been? Huh? Where the hell have you been? We’ve been looking for you forever. People have died! What were you thinking? Damn it, Allie, were you really going to kill me?”

“Little Sister,” Laura whispered. Blood drizzled from the corner of her mouth, the mask still halfway on and she was pale as death. Sirens screamed. They were so close they sounded as if they were inside the damned barn.

Cassie turned on the wounded woman. Laura Merrick. Seriously? The makeup person and hairdresser to the stars was Cassie’s half sister and probably a psychotic killer? Or was the murderess Allie?

“Why?” Cassie demanded, but Laura only groaned.

“Why?” she asked again, this time focusing on her younger sister, the little girl who had turned into a monster.

Allie just stared, and Cassie couldn’t help but wonder if she was indeed almost catatonic or this, like so many scenes in her life, was just an act.

“It’s not my fault,” Allie whispered.

Cassie lost it.

Before thinking, she whirled and she slapped the wretch that her little sister had become. Allie’s head snapped back and her lost, forlorn expression instantly morphed into an ugly rage.

Barely aware that the barn was suddenly alive, blue and red light pulsing through the windows, policemen and women converging on the barn, Cassie plowed on. Shaking, she said, “It is your fault. You could have let us know you were alive! You didn’t need to put Mom and me and everyone else through this hell!” She was shaking. “Quit faking it and acting like you didn’t know what you were doing, Allie! You’re not a frightened little girl anymore.”

“And you hate me for it,” Allie said, her facade slipping a little, her lips curling in disgust.

“You effin’ thought I was going to die on that set!” Cassie said and lunged at her sister as Laura moaned at their feet.

Shane stepped in. Grabbed Cassie. Held her back. “It’s over,” he whispered into her ear and she heard the sound of other footsteps thundering through the barn, echoing on the floors. She struggled, wanting to beat the living tar out of the woman Laura had dubbed “Baby Sister.” It was fitting, really. Allie had always played the part of the wounded little girl, at least in their family.

“Police! Drop your weapons!” a man shouted.

From the floor, Laura, one eye exposed glared up at them. With an effort, she said, “This isn’t the way it’s supposed to be. Don’t you get it? I should be the star. Not you, Baby Sister!” She spat and coughed. “
I’m
the firstborn. Me!” She was gurgling now, spittle and blood frothing red on her lips. “I’m the Big Sister and you two are the interlopers.” She glared at Cassie and snarled. “You’re a freak, Little Sister, that’s what you are. You could never make it in the business even though you had the chance!” Her words garbled then, and Cassie, looking over her stepfather’s shoulder, met Trent’s eyes.

Leaning against a wall, his face chalky white, blood staining his jeans, he looked as if he might pass out at any second. “Oh, Jesus,” she said, her anger evaporating, her heart wrenching. “Trent!” Hurtling out of Shane’s arms, she ran to him. “Oh, God. We need an ambulance.”

He forced a bit of a smile. “ . . . or two.” He hugged her fiercely and buried his face in her hair. She collapsed against him, drinking in the smell of him, feeling the strength, his incredible strength waning. The thought of losing him was too much to bear. “Hang in there,” she whispered over the rush of other officers arriving and the bleating of a rescue vehicle piercing the night.

“Cuff her,” Shane said to the first deputy on the scene. He was motioning to Allie. “And get this one,” he indicated Laura, “to a hospital. Keep her under guard. She’s dangerous. But first,” he hitched his thumb toward Trent, “get this one to a hospital STAT. After you see to Kittle here.”

Cassie said, “And there’s . . . there’s a dead body in the silo. I think maybe Belva Nelson, but I’m not sure.” Involuntarily, she shuddered remembering the brush of cold flesh against hers.

“Check it out,” Shane ordered another deputy and the man responded, despite the fact that Carter had no jurisdiction, was no longer an officer. Still no one questioned his authority. Not tonight.

Carter bent down on a knee and tried to revive Laura.

“Come on. Stay with me,” he ordered, but the woman was still. “Come on, Laura! Hang in there.” But it was obvious to Cassie the woman she’d known as Laura Merrick was gone.

Allie watched it all. As her hands were forced behind her back, cuffs snapped into place, she seemed to suddenly become aware of what was happening.

“It . . . this . . . it’s not my fault. And my disappearance, that was staged, too. It was Brandon’s idea to hide. I mean, after I realized that she”—Allie hitched her chin to the still body of Laura Merrick—“was serious about killing people, that she actually exchanged the prop gun for a real one.” With big eyes, she looked at Cassie. “You have to believe me, I wouldn’t have let you go to jail and I was going to come out . . . to show up. You know, before the premier and pass it off as being odd or eccentric, but then I got scared . . . people started dying.” She looked pleadingly at Shane.

His jaw tightened and he said to the nearest deputy, “Read her her rights.”

“No! Shane,” Allie cried. “Please. Daddy!”

He physically jerked and looked about to point out that he wasn’t her father, but didn’t.

Footsteps rang and two cops, weapons drawn, appeared. “What the hell’s going on here?” one asked.

Carter said, “We need an ambulance.”

One of the cops nodded. “On its way.”

“There’s a body,” Cassie said, pointing behind her to the opening into the silo. “In there.”

“What?” One of the deputies pulled a flashlight from his belt and peered inside. “Jesus H. Christ. It’s a nurse . . . like from the fifties or something!”

“She’s dead.” No doubt the nurse was Belva Nelson and Laura had hoped to terrorize Cassie one last time. Cassie might have fallen down the shaft by mistake or it might have been all part of Laura’s sick plot, but she’d dressed Belva in her old uniform and dumped her body into the silo.

“Call Detective Nash,” Shane said to the remaining deputy as the first descended the shaft. “Portland PD. She’s been looking for this one.”

The distinctive bleat of an ambulance’s siren drew near, more cops and paramedics arriving. Too late for Laura Merrick.

At that moment, Hud appeared limping slightly. “Hey, Buddy,” Trent said. “We’ll get you fixed up.”

“But you’re okay,” she asked and felt Trent’s hand tangle in her hair. She was so thankful he was alive, so happy to be his wife.

“I am now, baby,” he whispered, kissing her forehead and holding her tight against him. “I am now.”

 

D
etective Nash walked through the three rooms Laura Merrick had rented in a little dive in Portland, one last time. They were odd. Merrick had decorated them to appear as if she were actually living in LA, even going so far as to put in a fake window, actually a back-lit poster with a view of the Hollywood sign.

The room was filled with costumes and wigs she’d collected over the years, those from Jenna and Allie in their various movie roles, and the walls were covered with movie posters of her mother and half-sister, many of which had been torn or ripped to shreds and then taped back together. A makeup mirror was front and center. And a printer sat in a corner along with some kind of laminating machine. Nash had even found a box of elastic bands to be used for the making of even more masks, the fronts of which littered the floor.

Handy.

There were a lot of questions left about Laura Merrick, whose adoptive sister had died when she was in her teens, the result of a tragic car accident. The Beauchamps, too, were deceased, both killed in a house fire. For now, the questions would remain unanswered as Laura had been pronounced DOA at the hospital, three nights earlier.

Since that night, the police had identified Belva Nelson’s body, stuffed into the empty grain silo at Trent Kittle’s farm. Kittle himself had been shot by Merrick, but was surviving, the bullet tearing through his thigh, but not hitting his femur or femoral artery. He was lucky.

Jenna Hughes was rumored to be a wreck with guilt over her children, but Cassie, who had been a rebel in her youth and at odds with her mother, was stepping up. A good thing.

Nash picked up a makeup brush and held it, then looked in the mirror. Laura had been obsessed with Jenna and her daughters. Had tried to get into films herself, but when that didn’t pan out had turned to making Hollywood stars more beautiful and glamorous than they were naturally. Though successful, she’d always felt abandoned.

Had her parents lived, maybe her story would have turned out differently.

As for Sonja Watkins, her link was beauty school, where she’d met Laura and kept in touch. Sonja now wondered if she’d been used, if Laura had kept up the relationship because she knew that Belva was the nurse in attendance when she’d been born. She’d paid Belva to gaslight Cassie, but the plan had backfired. Seeing the old nurse hadn’t escalated Cassie’s mental illness; if anything it had caused Cassie to want to get better, to find Allie. Maybe Belva Nelson had left the earring on purpose, so that Cassie would know she wasn’t hallucinating. Nash had learned from talking to her niece that Belva had serious guilt over her complicity in the sham and also for having taken some kind of hush money way back when during the private adoption, though that was still, and might always be, unclear.

Laura had been in cahoots with Allie, though Allie insisted she had no part in the murders, that she was only trying to kill Laura that night, to end it all. And she had. She’d killed her half-sister. Nash would like nothing better to see the Hollywood princess wearing a prison jumpsuit for the rest of her life.

Nash put the brush back in its holder.

Allie Kramer herself had admitted that her disappearance was all a publicity stunt. Allie was now in custody, the death of Laura Merrick being investigated, reporters besieging the department. Somehow Allie had hidden in plain sight, with Brandon’s help. They’d set up sightings, and created the fake text messages, and had milked it for all it was worth.

Nash wasn’t really buying Allie’s innocent act.

She could have come forward at any time.

Despite the murders.

Of course, Laura Merrick had been behind Holly Dennison and Brandi Potts’s deaths. Airline records proved she was in each city at the time. The only crime she hadn’t committed was the abduction of Allie Kramer. As for the original shooting on the set of
Dead Heat
? The working theory was that Laura had lifted the key from the prop manager Ineesha Salinger’s purse, when she’d come in for a touch-up on her hair. Laura had slipped out and made a copy while Ineesha had waited for her color to process. The timing had been right. According to the prop manager, Laura had been gone “twenty minutes or so” and come back with a box lunch. There were two hardware stores between Laura’s shop and the café where Laura had ordered the croissants and brie. The LAPD was checking with the stores.

It was all coming together.

Rumor had it that Allie had agreed to an exclusive interview with Whitney Stone for an undisclosed sum of money. Another rumor had it that she was planning an insanity plea.

Typical.

By her own admission, Allie Kramer had disappeared to create a buzz surrounding herself before
Dead Heat
opened.

Looked like she got her wish.

Even if she did end up in jail.

Nash walked out of the little apartment and headed to her car. The sun was peeking out from behind the clouds, weak beams playing against the rain-washed streets. She glanced around the neighborhood and considered it briefly as a place where she might move since the sale on Edwina’s mansion was going through, but no, this area was too close to the case. She’d be forever thinking about Allie Kramer if she lived here and God, no, she didn’t want that.

 

Cassie drove up to the house she’d lived in as a teen, the home she’d so despised and wondered if she’d ever feel anything but hatred of the place. Though the rambling house with the broad porch had been her mother’s sanctuary, Cassie thought of it as nothing but evil.

Ten years ago a madman had terrorized them all when they’d lived here and now, again, the unthinkable had happened. She parked and climbed out of the car, the May sun weak, the grass green, crocus and azaleas in bloom. The door opened before she reached the top step and she saw her mother, ten pounds lighter than she had been a few months before, a few more strands of silver hair marring her once glossy black tresses.

“She’s inside?” Cassie asked, and Jenna nodded.

Allie Kramer had made bail. Of course she would have to go to trial for her part in the deaths of Holly Dennison, Brandi Potts, and Belva Nelson, though it was generally believed that she was not the shooter, had only been on the periphery of the homicides.

Detective Nash was pushing for harsher charges, but Allie’s team of lawyers, bought and paid for by the money she’d made off her films, were fighting the charges tooth and nail. Of course Lucinda Rinaldi was suing and really, Cassie thought, unzipping her sweater and walking into the kitchen, who would blame her. Lucinda’s recovery was iffy at best and she’d already talked to Cassie, warning her that any story surrounding Allie Kramer and her duplicity in the shooting was Lucinda’s property.

Well, maybe.

Allie was seated at the kitchen table, a cup of tea growing cold in front of her, shafts of sunlight filtering through the French doors to bathe her in an almost angelic glow.

Cassie knew better.

She wouldn’t be fooled.

“Hi,” Allie said, looking up, not smiling. Without makeup she looked so much younger than she had in any of her films.

“Hi.”

Allie’s gaze slid around Cassie. “No Trent.”

“No.” She sat in the chair across from her sister while Jenna, ever the peacemaker, hovered on the other side of the kitchen island. “I hear that you might plead insanity.”

Allie’s jaw tightened and her eyes slid to the side. “Maybe. It’s not been decided.”

“You know, I think you owe me some explanations.” Cassie rubbed her shoulder. It was healing, but still twinged now and again. She’d been lucky. Trent, too. Other than losing a lot of blood and, as he’d said, “needing a refill,” he’d been relatively unhurt, the bullet going through his leg to lodge in the barn, his femur, artery, and his life spared. Thank God.

“Me, too,” Jenna said. “I’ve never asked you, but I know you read my diary. Is that how you found Laura?”

Allie nodded, picked up her cup. “That was the start.”

“You contacted her?” Cassie asked.

“No way. It was Laura. She figured it out on her end.”

“So she approached you.”

Allie rolled her eyes. “Yeah. Since I knew it was true, I’d found the diary as you said, done a little digging around, found the Beauchamp family, I knew she was the real deal.”

“So you decided to murder me?”

“No, no, it wasn’t like that. It was a fantasy, that’s all, but Laura took it to another level. I figured it out and disappeared. Brandon liked the idea of all the buzz it caused, and so there you go.”

Jenna cleared her throat. “If you read my diary, you know how hard it was for me to give her up . . .” Tears welled in her eyes and she cleared her throat. “Well, what’s done is done. Right?”

Cassie thought about what she was going to say. “Maybe not,” she admitted. “I’m writing this story, despite what Lucinda Rinaldi thinks, and so I’ve been doing a lot of research, you know, while Trent was recovering and even though both of Laura’s parents are dead, there’s all kinds of information about them and her adoptive sister. She was almost the same age, only six months difference.”

Jenna was staring at Cassie so hard she squirmed.

“What?” her mother asked.

“Well, here’s the thing. I had Laura’s DNA tested. From her hair.”

The temperature in the room seemed to drop ten degrees.

“And?” Jenna asked.

“She’s not your daughter, the DNA wasn’t a match to mine at all.”

“But . . . What . . . I mean . . .” Jenna gripped the counter for support. “What’re you saying?”

“That Laura Rae Beachamp Wells Merrick was not your biological daughter. Most likely her sister, Elana, was.” Cassie reached in to her pocket and withdrew a photo of a teenaged girl, a girl who despite her coloring had the same shaped face and nose and large green eyes as Jenna. She laid the picture on the table and Jenna came close to look at it.

“No.”

“I think so, yes.”

“What?” Allie whispered. “No. No.” She was shaking her head wildly. “I . . . I wouldn’t have gotten involved with her. I mean . . . no, this can’t be right.”

Cassie leveled her younger sister with a deadly stare. “Do you think I would have brought this up if I didn’t believe it? I already sent these photos to Detective Nash.”

“No! Why?” Allie was on her feet, her tea spilling. “You can’t do this, Cassie. Just butt the hell out. I—I’m in enough trouble as it is.”

“And whose fault is that?” Cassie threw back as Jenna, holding the snapshot in quaking fingers, stared at the image.

“Is it possible?” she whispered.

“Possible and probable. Laura was nuts. I think she killed her sister. She miraculously survived when Elana didn’t. And her parents, they died in a house fire. How about that. Careless smoking, though they’d both given up the habit years before.”

In her mind’s eye Cassie saw Laura as she had been in her shop, desperate for a cigarette and desperate to tell Cassie the news about Holly. She’d played a part, yes, she could act, but deep down, no doubt, she’d loved telling the story, reveled in the taking of a life.

Jenna was shattered and Cassie couldn’t help but wonder, was it worse to know that your child was the victim of murder, or a killer herself? Did it matter? Both were now dead. And Jenna, no doubt, would feel forever guilty for giving up her firstborn.

There really was no good news.

“I don’t know why you came here,” Allie said, her eyes dark.

Cassie sighed. “Because we’re a family. Like it or not, ‘Baby Sister,’ we’re what each other’s got.”

With that she left, gave her mother a kiss on the head, promised she’d be back, noticed the still simmering hatred in her sister’s eyes, and drove home. To Trent’s ranch, where both he and Hud, who had somehow been injured, were recuperating.

As she drove past the lush fields and noticed the new foals next to the mares in one pasture, calves and cows in another, she realized how much at home she felt. It was ironic, she thought, that Allie had been right about one thing. She had found happiness. With Trent. Who would have thought it would be in Sticksville, Oregon? Certainly not she. But as she parked and picked her way around puddles, stopping to pat a wiggling Hud on his head, she understood why, so long ago, Jenna had packed up her daughters and moved away from the glitz, glamor, fame, and stress of Hollywood. This really wasn’t such a bad place.

She walked into the kitchen, the dog limping slightly as he raced down the hallway in front of her, and she heard Trent’s voice. “Hey, there, Hud,” he said, loud enough for her to hear. “Did you find my wife?”

Hud yipped loudly.

“Oh, you did? Well, do you think you could convince her to bring me a beer?”

She walked into the den and saw him stretched out on the couch, the TV on low, one heel propped on the pillows.

“Not a chance in hell,” she said to him and grinned wickedly. She walked to the couch and trailed a finger from his waistband to his neck before winking. “Get your own damned beer.”