Aquamarine (19 page)

“You’re suggesting someone planted evidence in your apartment to frame you for Kirsten’s murder? How could that someone know I’d find the ring?”

“I doubt he intended to frame me. The arrogant son of a bitch was just rubbing my nose in the fact that the real Kirsten was dead.”

His story had a certain twisted plausibility. She could almost believe it. Almost.

“What really happened during that argument with Kirsten? Did you get a little carried away? Hit her a little too hard?”

“Oh, God. We need to talk.”

That didn’t sound like a denial.

“We are talking.”

“Face-to-face.”

“Stay away from me, Teague. I don’t trust you.”

“But I need to explain.”

“What? How you killed your wife? What happened? Did she tell you the baby wasn’t yours?”

“Dammit, I loved Kirsten. And believe it or not, I love you.”

“Stay away from me,” she repeated, and hung up.

No sooner had she replaced the receiver than the phone rang again.

Shea stared at the telephone as if it were a rattler about to strike. Maybe if she just let it ring, he’d get the hint. Or not, she thought as the ringing continued unabated. On ring fifteen, she snatched up the receiver. “Dammit, Teague! I don’t want to talk to you!”

“Kirsten?”

Kevin, not Teague. “Sorry about that. I thought … Never mind. How’s Daddy?”

“Hanging in there.”

“Could I talk to Cynthia for a minute?” she asked. “Sorry. She just slipped down the hall in search of a coffee machine. Was it important?”

“No, not really. Tell her I’m thinking of her, okay?”

“How are you doing?” Kevin asked.

“Fine.”

“I take it Teague tracked you down.” She made a noncommittal sound.

“What did he have to say?”

“Nothing I wanted to hear.” Her flat tone put an end to that line of questioning. “The only other excitement was when I thought I saw something moving in the bushes earlier.”

“Oh, yeah?” She could almost see his ears perking up.

“Turned out to be a skunk.”

Kevin chuckled. “I’ll call if there’s any change in
Dad’s condition,” he promised. “Keep the doors locked and watch out for skunks. Both the human and animal varieties.”

After he hung up, she tried to watch TV but couldn’t concentrate. After channel surfing for twenty minutes, she finally gave up and went upstairs for what was probably the shortest shower in history.

The whole time the water was running, she kept remembering the famous scene from
Psycho.
The fact that this shower stall had a very solid frosted-glass door instead of a flimsy plastic curtain didn’t put her mind at rest.

Following her quick scrubdown, she changed into her nightie, checking once more on Mikey before moving next door to Kirsten’s room. Kevin had left it unlocked for her use. She’d brought the portable phone from downstairs, just in case. Absentmindedly, she moved things aside to make room on the bedside table.

She should have been more careful. The instant her fingers touched the jagged surfaces of the aquamarine crystal cluster, a surge passed through her body. Her hand tightened convulsively. The razor-sharp edges bit into her hand. She watched in horrified disbelief as her blood filled the crevices of the crystal. A humming filled her ears, reverberating throughout her body. She shook uncontrollably, as if seized with palsy.
The secret’s in the stone.
It was her last conscious thought before Kirsten’s memories took control.

She was sitting on a flat-topped boulder at the edge of the clearing in front of the old cabin waiting for Teague. The odd part was, Teague was never late
.

Maybe she’d misunderstood his note. She dug a folded paper from the pocket of her shorts.
Five o’clock,
his note said.
Five o’clock at the old cabin.

When she’d found it stuffed under her bedroom door, her first thought was that Teague had relented and the wedding was back on. Yes, okay, she’d lied, but he didn’t have to make a federal case out of it, did he?

The weather was unusually hot and muggy, the sky a sullen, brassy color. Perspiration dampened her bangs and made her shirt cling wetly to her back. At this rate, she was going to need another shower before dinner
.

Shifting position, Kirsten brushed impatiently at the cloud of persistent gnats dive-bombing her face. What was keeping Teague?

She stood up with a shrug. As long as she was there, she might as well have another look at the newest addition to her collection. It sat on the shelf inside next to her
Gem State Rockhound’s Bible.
She hauled both book and rock back outside, where the light was better
.

Kirsten held the clump of blue-green crystals so that they’d catch the soft light filtering down through the leaves. As she turned the sample this way and that, its facets glittered aqua fire like sunlight sparkling off tropical seas
.

It was a gorgeous specimen with long, well-defined crystals, doubly special because it had been a birthday present from Kevin. According to the
Rockhound’s Bible,
it was a blue-green form of beryl known as aquamarine—just like the central stone of her engagement ring
.

A breeze stirred through the thicket, rich with the scent of humus. Thunder growled an ominous threat, and lightning flashed over the mountains to the west, where thunderheads were building fast
.

She drummed her fingers impatiently on the spine of the
book. It was getting late, and it looked as if it would rain. Where was Teague, anyway? She scanned the clearing, a slight frown knitting her brow. She was alone
.

A lone crow flew over, rasping out what sounded like an insult. Or the punch line of a dirty joke. Kirsten checked her watch. Five more minutes. She’d give Mr. Teague Harris five more minutes, then she really had to go. If he wanted to kiss and make up, then he could damned well be on time
.

Behind her a twig snapped with a sharp crack that sounded as loud as a rifle shot in the late-afternoon hush. Kirsten whirled around, but no one was there. “Teague?” She smiled. “Wolfman, is that you?” She peered into the greenery
.

No answer. No Teague. No nothing.
Must be an animal,
she told herself
.

She settled back down on the flat rock. Laying the
Rockhound’s Bible
aside, she picked up the crystal cluster once again. The flickering sunlight caught the crystalline facets in a mesmerizing dazzle. The stone seemed to burn with an interior fire like a sliver off a hot blue star
.

A tiny rustle of sound from behind alerted her. Her fingers tightened involuntarily, and she felt a sharp pain where the crystal sliced into her hand. Blood flowed warmly, smearing the surfaces of the rock. Then a shadow fell between her and the sun. “Teague?”

She started to turn, but before she was halfway around, something slammed into the back of her head with tremendous force. Her brain exploded in pain, terrible pain. And then there was nothing
.

The telephone rang insistently. Shea fought her way back to consciousness through a fuzzy dream state. Her entire body felt inordinately heavy, as if she were pulling
about five Gs, but her eyelids were leaden. She pried them open, then belatedly became aware of the sharp pain slicing across the fingers of her right hand.

Staring down in surprise, she discovered she had cut herself on the edges of the crystal cluster she was still clutching. The flow had already begun to clot, though blood was still welling up in fat drops along the two parallel lines that slashed diagonally across her fingers.

She dropped the crystal, wrapped her hand in the tail of her nightie, then awkwardly, using her left hand, answered the phone. “Hello?”

“Were you asleep?” Kevin asked.

Not the toughest question in the world, but she wasn’t sure she knew the answer to it. Had the whole experience been nothing more than a particularly vivid dream? Or had she just relived another of Kirsten’s memories?
Were you asleep?
Darned if she knew.

“Why are you calling again so soon? Is something wrong?” Besides the fact that she might be losing her mind.

“Soon? It’s been hours since I called you.”

Shea grabbed the portable alarm clock from the bedside table. Four minutes past three. So she must have fallen asleep on Kirsten’s bed. And dreamed Kirsten’s nightmare. “Sorry if I seem a little groggy, Kevin. I’m never at my best in the wee hours.”

“Who is? Mom just crashed a little while ago. I guess she felt she could relax now that there are two deputies posted outside Dad’s door.”

She frowned. “If Daddy’s all right, then why did you call?”

“Just checking in. Sweet dreams.” He hung up while Shea was still pondering the irony of his final words.

After washing her cuts, she sprayed them with antiseptic and covered them with a gauze pad secured by half a roll of adhesive tape. The lacerations were fairly superficial, though the ones on her index finger were still oozing blood. She flexed her hand experimentally. Not bad. A little sore, but usable.

Shea returned to Kirsten’s bedroom, more disturbed by her nightmare than by a few cuts. Had it been a nightmare? she asked herself. Or another of Kirsten’s memories? And if it
had
been a memory—as she strongly suspected it was—what had triggered it? The room? The stone? Or was Kirsten herself trying to warn her of some present danger?

“Kirsten? Are you there?” She peered at herself in the cheval glass, searching her features for some hint of an alien presence, but she looked pretty much the way she always looked—discounting the circles under her eyes. “Who killed you, Kirsten? Who was it?”

Shea’s eyes grew round as the truth hit her with the force of a sledgehammer blow. “You don’t know,” she whispered. “You never saw who hit you, did you?”

A wave of pain and frustration flooded her. Kirsten’s pain. Kirsten’s frustration.
Please. I need your strength. Together we can find the truth.
The words swirled through her head like a handful of confetti in a cold wind.

She didn’t have a clue as to who had killed Kirsten, but the compulsion to visit the scene of the crime was suddenly overwhelming. “This is insane,” she told herself out loud. “I’m listening to voices in my head.” But she got dressed, anyway, then called Glory to baby-sit Mikey. “I’ve got to go out for a while and I don’t want to leave her alone. How’s your headache?”

“Headache?” Glory echoed. She evidently wasn’t
tracking too well. Most people didn’t when first awakened from a sound sleep.

“Sorry about waking you, but it couldn’t be helped. How about it? Will you come stay with Mikey for a while?”

“Be right there,” Glory said.

Shea hung up, then made a slow, sweeping survey of the room. The crystal cluster glittered in the glow of the bedside lamp.

Take it.
The words echoed in her head.
The crystal’s the connection
.

Not questioning the source of her knowledge, Shea stuffed the heavy aquamarine deep into one of the big pockets of her sweatshirt. Now what else did she need?

A flashlight. Ruth keeps them in a drawer in the kitchen.
Once again Shea accepted the knowledge as a gift.

Quietly, she slipped downstairs and, without thinking about it, opened the right drawer on the first try. The flashlights were lined up inside, smallest to largest, just as she had pictured them. Shea chose the biggest one, reasoning that it could double as a weapon in a pinch.

She drummed her fingertips on the countertop. What else did she need?

A shovel.
The words popped into her head unbidden.

A shovel? “Am I going to be digging then?” she whispered, but there was no answer. “Okay, a shovel it is.”

Most of the tools were stored in the shed near the Griffins’ house, but a few gardening implements were kept in the crawlspace under the deck.

She shivered as she stepped out the kitchen door into the cool, damp night. The customary scent of pine was overlaid by the heavy, almost sickeningly sweet odor of the alyssum in the planter edging the deck. The night
was still but full of sounds—a frog chorus down by the lake, the periodic crackle of moths electrocuting themselves in the bug zapper, the distant rumble of a train passing through Liberty.

She left the deck for the shadows of the lawn, moving cautiously. The wet grass quickly soaked her shoes, and a full squadron of mosquitoes buzzed her ears in preparation for a major offensive. She waved them away impatiently, wishing she’d had the foresight to spray herself with insect repellent.

Something rustled in the deep shadows near the edge of the shrubbery bed. She froze, straining her ears in the darkness.

Nothing.

Probably just the skunk she’d seen earlier, she told herself, but couldn’t shake the unnerving certainty that someone or something was watching her from the cover of darkness.

When an owl glided past on silent wings, hooting softly, she started violently, turning to follow its hushed progress. As she did, she noticed her own telltale tracks in the dew-soaked grass. If anyone was shadowing her, she was certainly making the job easy for him or her. She shivered again, this time not with the cold.

She doused her light and made a dash for the far side of the pool, feeling less vulnerable once she had gained the relative safety of a position deep in the inky shadows near the base of the deck. Her eyes and ears alert for any signs of pursuit, Shea crouched in the darkness long enough to allow her panicked respiratory system to resume normal operations. Then she flicked the light back on, training its beam on the bolt that secured the door to the space under the deck.

The mechanism was stiff with rust. Evidently no one had used it in a while. She fought the stubborn metal in an agitated silence, anxiety pushing her to hurry, hurry. The bolt broke free with a crack. She slid it to the right to release the catch, then shoved the door open.

Shea shone the flashlight into the narrow space under the deck. The plastic toolbox was there, just as Kirsten had remembered, the bright blue of its surface nearly obscured by a thick layer of dust. Shea dragged it out and opened it.