Die Before I Wake (32 page)

The sea of Shop City smocks parted, and I finally saw Mel’s face. I’d never been so happy to see anybody in my life. Her fellow associates filed out of the tiny office, and Mel knelt beside me. “I am so glad Gloria was here doing her weekly shopping,” she said. “I didn’t have a clue what to do. I’ve never seen anybody faint before. You went down like a pile of bricks. It’s a wonder you didn’t give yourself a new concussion on top of the old one.”

“It’s all right,” I said. “Acquiring new bruises seems to have become a daily thing with me. Can I sit up now?”

The two women helped me to a sitting position.

“As long as you’re sure you’re all right,” Gloria said,

“I really need to go. My ice cream is sitting out there in my shopping cart, melting.”

There was no disaster worse than melted ice cream. I thanked her, and she left me alone with Mel. “I think I should drive you home,” she said.

I started to protest, then realized I wasn’t sure I had the energy to drive, let alone the ability to remain conscious long enough to reach our driveway in one piece. “Fine,” I said. “I can pick up my car later.”

The ride home only took five minutes. One of the advantages of living in a small town. We pulled into the driveway and parked behind Riley’s pickup truck. Riley Larkin, Building and Remodeling, it said on both doors in a bold, modern font. “Riley doesn’t know about Sadie,” Mel said.

I gave her a long, hard look. “Your point?” I said.

“Sadie doesn’t know, either,” she said softly.

“She’s been through so much—”

“Don’t worry. She won’t hear it from me. I’ll be too busy trying to stay alive.” I opened the door and climbed out of the car.

“Listen, Julie, if you need anything—”

“Right. I know who to call.” I slammed the door and walked away.

The house was empty. I walked through the rooms, one after another, wondering how I could ever have thought this house was beautiful when in truth, it emanated a malevolence so thick I could taste it. Everything inside was tainted with it. Poisoned by the knowledge of what had happened to its mistress.

Upstairs, I lay on the bed in a daze. What a mess I’d fallen into. My own personal House of Horror.

I’d been in denial for so long, but I couldn’t deny the truth any longer. The puzzle had finally come together, and the resulting picture was heartbreaking. My husband, the man I adored, had killed his first wife. And Riley wasn’t blameless in this thing, either. The philandering son-of-a-bitch had cuck-olded his own brother. What kind of man would sleep with his brother’s wife? Not to mention conceive a child with her? Not that his actions—or Beth’s—excused what Tom had done. There was no excuse for murder. But none of this would have ever come about if Riley’d been able to keep it in his pants.

I was so tired. I hadn’t experienced it with my first pregnancy, this kind of soul-sucking, overwhelming exhaustion. I closed my eyes for a moment and was instantly asleep. I found myself back in the rear seat of that Barracuda, hip-hop music thumping and thrashing about my head. The three bellicose teenagers were there, and Snaggle-Tooth Beth. “I’m missing something,” I told her. “What is it that I’m missing?”

Beth opened her mouth to respond, and a worm crawled out of that dark hole. I watched in horrified fascination as it crawled across her mossy face.

“Nothing is what it seems,” she said cryptically.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” I shouted at her, so angry I wanted to jump up and down and stamp my feet, like a three-year-old in the middle of a temper tantrum. “Stop talking in riddles!

Tom killed you! There’s nothing left to know. Why are you making this so difficult for me?”

“I tried to warn you, but you didn’t listen.” Somewhere in the background of my dream, a phone rang. Ignoring it, I said, “Warn me about what?”

“I tried to warn you to watch your back.” The phone kept ringing. “The puzzle’s not complete yet.”

“Goddamn it, Beth, you’re still talking in riddles!”

“Figure it out for yourself.”

I awoke with a jolt. It felt as though I’d slept for only about ten minutes, but when I checked my watch, I discovered that I’d been out for four hours.

Four hours?
It was nearly dusk, and I’d slept the afternoon away. That was so unlike me, it was scary.

The puzzle’s not complete yet.
That’s what Beth had said to me this time around. What was that supposed to mean? What was she trying to tell me?

Not Beth, I corrected myself. I’d read somewhere that the people in our dreams are actually symbolic of various characteristics of the dreamer’s own personality. I wasn’t sure I believed that, but I wasn’t crazy enough to think I’d actually spoken with Beth Larkin. It was my own subconscious that had given voice to Beth’s words. What had I missed? Overlooked? What threads had I left untied?

The note.
I hadn’t followed up on Beth’s note.

I’d been too busy recuperating from my fall and, in my foggy state, I’d simply forgotten it. I got up from the bed, still groggy from my nap, and went downstairs. I got the phone book from the kitchen drawer and looked up the number to the hospital emergency room.

A pleasant, well-modulated female voice answered.

“Newmarket General Hospital, Acute Care Center, Debbie speaking. How may I help you?”

“Hi, Debbie,” I said. “This is Julie Larkin. I was in there a couple of weeks ago, after I fell down the stairs.”

“I remember you. What can I do for you, Mrs.

Larkin?”

“While I was there that day—possibly while I was upstairs having my CAT scan—I seem to have lost a piece of paper. I think it fell out of my pocket when I undressed in the cubicle.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I was just wondering if you’d found it after I left.”

“As a matter of fact, we did.”

“You did?” My heart raced with either excitement or terror. I wasn’t entirely sure which it was.

“What did you do with it?”

“We gave it to Dr. Larkin when he came in asking about it a few days later. I guess he forgot to tell you.”

“I guess he did.”

I hung up the phone, my heart continuing to thud a steady rhythm against my ribs. So Tom had the note. He’d read it, and he knew damn well that I’d read it, as well. He had to know I suspected something. I might not know the entire story yet, but what I did know—coupled with my suspicions about the rest—was enough to render me a threat. A liability instead of an asset. If I uncovered the rest of it, I could destroy his life. Tom would never let me do that. He’d never let me send him to prison and leave the girls fatherless.

Which meant he had no choice but to kill me.

The only proof I had of anything was in that note.

I had to find it.

In my pocket, my cell phone chirped. I pulled it out, read the words on the screen: ONE VOICE

MAIL MESSAGE. That must have been the phone I heard ringing in my dream. I flipped the phone open, checked the calls received list. The last call had come from a number within the 207 area code, but it wasn’t familiar to me. I didn’t have time right now to deal with it. I had a killer to catch. Steeling myself against the hard truth of those words, I flipped the phone closed, shoved it back into my pocket, and headed down the hall to Tom’s study. If the note still existed, it would be in here.

The desktop was, as always, immaculate. I slid open the top drawer and began rummaging through its contents. Nothing of any significance.

I closed that drawer, knelt, and opened the heavy file drawer on the side instead. It was filled, as I had suspected, with green hanging files that Tom had clearly marked and neatly filed in alphabeti-cal order. I began working my way through the tabs. AUTO LOANS, HOME REPAIRS, HOMEOWNER’S INSURANCE, MEDICAL/DENTAL, MISCELLANEOUS, and UTILITY BILLS. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for. A file folder marked HOMICIDE, perhaps? As anal-retentive as Tom was, nothing would surprise me. I continued on through what could only be described as personal files, one for every member of the household: JULIE, MOM, SADIE, TAYLOR, TOM.

Good Lord, the man kept file folders on us? What on earth would he put in them? Reports of our daily activities? Scowling, I pulled one out at random. It was Taylor’s. I opened it up. Inside, I found her kindergarten school photo and her first-grade report cards. Her immunization records—all her immunizations were up-to-date—and a copy of her birth certificate. And in a little plastic sandwich baggie, a perfectly formed baby tooth.

It was the tooth that got to me, that carefully preserved memento, that shining example of doting fa-therhood. How could a man so sentimental he’d save his daughter’s baby tooth in a sandwich bag be capable of murder? What if I was wrong? What if I were looking at the wrong brother? Riley’d been in that hospital cubicle with me. He could have seen the note when it fell out of my pocket. It could have even been Riley who removed it from my pocket. I had no proof it had fallen out; I just knew it had turned up among the missing. And Riley’d had ample opportunity to place those batteries on the stairs. After all, he was the one who was at home that day, the one who’d “found” me as I lay there, helpless and screaming for assistance.

“Looking for something?”

As if my thoughts had conjured him up, there stood Riley, in the flesh. Looking better than any man had a right to look, he leaned casually against the door frame, a cold chicken leg in one hand.

Eating again. The man was always eating.

“No,” I said, my pulse accelerating slightly. He’d startled me, and right now, for more reasons than I could count, he was the last person I wanted to see.

“I’m just—” I waved my hand vaguely while I tried to find a reasonable explanation.

“Snooping,” he said, and took a bite of cold chicken.

“I am
not
snooping! And why aren’t you working?

I thought you had a kitchen to rebuild?”

“Chill, Julie, I’m just teasing you. Whatever Tom has in those files couldn’t possibly be worth snooping to see. I mean, how many dental X-rays and electric bills would it take to put you to sleep?” In my heightened state of paranoia, his words seemed to have more than one meaning. What did he mean about putting me to sleep? Was it some kind of veiled threat? Had he killed Beth and, now that I’d learned the truth, was he coming after me?

“Julie?” he said. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine!” I snapped, my anxiety giving way to annoyance. This man was undoubtedly the cause of all the ills in my life. Because of him and his inability to control his sexual urges, my husband would probably go to prison. And I might just end up dead.

“I just want to be left alone!”

“Okay,” he said, looking a little surprised. “Jeez.

I can tell when I’m not wanted. You don’t have to say it twice.” He hesitated a moment, opened his mouth as if he were about to say something more.

Then he thought better of it, and with a slight nod, turned and left me alone.

What in hell was wrong with me? My personality had changed so much in the past few weeks, I barely recognized myself. When I wasn’t in a fog, my emotions careened back and forth between anger and fear like a crazed pinball. Could this possibly be due to the hormone changes of pregnancy? I’d heard horror stories about women who had worse side effects from pregnancy than other women did from PMS.

Maybe I was just losing my mind.

I gathered up the contents of Taylor’s folder and returned it to the drawer. I paused, my hand hovering over the JULIE folder, before I swooped down and grabbed it. I couldn’t imagine there’d be anything in it of any value to me. I’d only been here a few weeks, too short a time for Tom to have accumulated anything of significance.

The folder contained only one item, a folded sheaf of papers covered in fine print. I unfolded it, read the lettering at the top.
Life Insurance Policy.
I squinted to focus on the tiny print. Ignoring all the legalese that insurance companies were required to toss into their policies to confound policy holders, I read between the lines and got the gist of it.

Dropping it as though I’d been burned, I gaped at it in horror. But like a bystander passing a horrific car crash, I couldn’t seem to take my eyes off the damn thing. I picked it up gingerly and reread it, over and over, until I convinced myself that my eyes weren’t deceiving me and I really was holding an insurance policy on my life. For two million dollars, payable to Thomas Larkin, beneficiary.

Dated three days before I fell down the stairs.

My breath came in little short gasps. My mouth had gone dry, and my heart was thudding. If I died, Tom would reap two million dollars. That was a pretty big payday for a marriage that had lasted less than two months.

Hurt doesn’t begin to describe how I felt. Betrayed comes closer, but it’s still too weak a word.

Devastated? Crushed? Destroyed? All of them were accurate, none of them sufficient to describe the pain I felt at the demise of my marriage to a man I’d loved with every fiber of my being. Instead of responding in kind, he’d crushed that love like an insect under his shoe. Ground me into the dirt and spat on me for good measure. I’d been right all along.

The man couldn’t be trusted. Usually, it felt good to be right. So why didn’t I feel any satisfaction?

In my pocket, my cell phone rang again. I pulled it out and stared numbly at the digital readout. It was the same unfamiliar number as before. I thought about ignoring it, but it was easier, in my deadened state, to just deal with it now. I flipped open the phone and said dully, “Hello?”

“Mrs. Larkin?”

“Yes.”

“This is Dr. Kapowicz. Did you get my voice mail message?”

Voice mail message? Um, no. It seems I’d been a little distracted by the fact that my husband wanted me dead to the tune of two million dollars. “Sorry,” I said. “I haven’t checked my messages. Why did you call?”

“I have the results of your blood tests. Mrs.