Sweet Little Lies (9 page)

Not fair. Michelle didn’t have any children,
didn’t have a husband for that matter. She just hadn’t met the
right guy. The consolation was Hayden. With a niece as adorable and
precocious as hers, she didn’t need her own child. Not just
yet.

She pulled into the Wolffs’ maple-lined
driveway and cut the engine on her Volvo. Corinne’s black BMW 535i
sat in front of the garage door. The wrought iron lantern lights
that flanked the front doors were on. Michelle frowned. It wasn’t
like Corinne to forget to turn those lights off. She remembered the
argument Corinne and Todd, her husband, had gotten into about them.
Todd wanted the kind that came on at dark and went off in the
morning automatically. Corinne insisted they could turn the switch
themselves with no problem. They’d gone back and forth, Todd
arguing for the security, Corinne insisting that the look of the
dusk-to-dawns were cheesy and wouldn’t fit their home. She’d won,
in the end. She always did.

Corinne always turned off the lights first
thing in the morning. Like clockwork.

The hair rose on the back of Michelle’s neck.
This wasn’t right.

She stepped out of the Volvo, didn’t shut the
door all the way behind her. The path to her sister’s front door
was a brick loggia pattern, the nooks and crannies filled with sand
to anchor the Chilhowies. Ridiculously expensive designer brick
from a tiny centuries-old sandpit in Virginia, if Michelle
remembered correctly. She followed the path and came to the front
porch. The door was unlocked, but that was typical. Michelle told
Corinne time and again to keep that door locked at night. But
Corinne always felt safe, didn’t see the need. Michelle eased the
door open.

Oh, my God.

Michelle ran back to her car and retrieved
her cell phone. As she dialed 911, she rushed back to the porch and
burst through the front door.

The phone was ringing in her ear now,
ringing, ringing. She registered the footprints, did a quick lap
around the bottom floor and seeing no one, took the steps two at a
time. She was breathing hard when she hit the top, took a left and
went down the hall.

A voice rang in her ear, and she tried to
comprehend the simple language as she took in the scene before
her.

“911, what is your emergency?”

She couldn’t answer. Oh God, Corinne. On the
floor, face down. Blood, everywhere.

“911, what is your emergency?”

The tears came freely. The words left her
mouth before she realized they’d been spoken aloud.

“I think my sister is dead. Oh, my God.”

“Can you repeat that, ma’am?”

Could she? Could she actually bring her
larynx to life without throwing up on her dead sister’s body? She
touched her fingers to Corinne’s neck. Remarkable how chilled the
dead flesh felt. Oh, God, the poor baby. She ran out of the room,
frenzied. Hayden, where was Hayden? Michelle turned in a tight
circle, seeing more footprints. No sign of the little girl. She was
yelling again, heard the words fly from her mouth as if they came
from another’s tongue.

“There’s blood, oh, my God, there’s blood
everywhere. And there are footprints… Hayden?” Michelle was
screaming, frantic. She tore back into the bedroom. Something in
her mind snapped, she couldn’t seem to get it together.

The 911 operator was yelling in her ear, but
she didn’t respond, couldn’t respond. “Ma’am? Ma’am? Who is
dead?”

Where was that precious little girl? A
strawberry-blond head appeared from around the edge of the
king-sized sleigh bed. It took a moment to register—

Hayden, with red hair? She was a towhead, so
blond it was almost white, no, that wasn’t right.

“Hayden, oh, dear sweet Jesus, you’re covered
in blood. Come here. How did you get out of your crib?” She
gathered the little girl in her arms. Hayden was frozen, immobile,
unable or unwilling to move for the longest moment, then she
wrapped her arms around her aunt’s shoulders with an empty embrace
of inevitability. Pieces of the toddler’s hair, stiff and hard with
blood, poked into her neck. Michelle felt a piece of her core
shift.

“Ma’am? Ma’am, what is your location?”

The operator’s voice forced her to look away
from Corinne’s broken form. She raised herself, holding tight to
Hayden. Get her out of here. She can’t see this anymore.

“Yes, I’m here. It’s 4589 Jocelyn Hollow
Court. My sister…” They were on the stairs now, moving down, and
Michelle could see the whispers of blood trailing up and down the
carpet.

The operator was still trying to sort through
the details. “Hayden is your sister?”

“Hayden is her daughter. Oh, God.”

As Michelle reached the bottom of the stairs,
the child shifted on her shoulder, reaching a hand behind her,
looking up toward the second floor.

“Mama hurt,” she said in a voice that made
her sound like a broken-down forty-year-old, not a coy,
eighteen-month-old sprite. Mama hurt. She doesn’t anymore,
darlin’.

They were out the front door and on the porch
now, Michelle drawing in huge gulps of air, Hayden crying silently
into her shoulder, a hand still pointing back toward the house.

“Who is dead, ma’am?” the operator asked,
more kindly now.

“My sister, Corinne Wolff. Oh, Corinne.
She’s… she’s cold.”

Michelle couldn’t hold it in anymore. She
heard the operator say they were sending the police. She walked
down those damnable bricks and set Hayden in the front seat of the
Volvo.

Then she turned and lost her battle with the
nausea, vomiting out her very soul at the base of the delicate
budding dogwood.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All
rights reserved.

Gavin Adler jumped when a small chime sounded
on his computer. He looked at the clock in surprise; it was already
6:00 P.M. During the winter months, darkness descended and reminded
him to close up shop, but the Daylight Savings time change
necessitated an alarm clock to let him know when it was time to
leave. Otherwise, he’d get lost in his computer and never find his
way home.

He rose from his chair, stretched, turned off
the computer and reached for his messenger bag. What a day. What a
long and glorious day.

He took his garbage with him; his lunch
leavings. There was no reason to have leftover banana peels in his
trash can overnight. He shut off the lights, locked the door,
dropped the plastic Publix bag into the Dumpster, and began the
two-block walk to his parking spot. His white Prius was one of the
few cars left in the lot.

Gavin listened to his iPod on the way out of
downtown. Traffic was testy, as always, so he waited patiently,
crawling through West End, then took the exit for I-40 and headed,
slowly, toward Memphis. The congestion cleared right past White
Bridge, and he sailed the rest of the way. The drive took
twenty-two minutes, he clocked it. Not too bad.

He left the highway at McCrory Lane and went
to his gym. The YMCA lot was full, as always. He checked in,
changed clothes in the locker room, ran for forty-five minutes,
worked on the elliptical for twenty, did one hundred inverted
crunches and shadow boxed for ten minutes. Then he toweled himself
off. He retrieved the messenger bag, left his sneakers in the
locker, slipped his feet back into the fluorescent orange rubber
Crocs he’d been wearing all day. He left his gym clothes on—they
would go straight into the wash.

He went across the street to Publix, bought a
single chicken cordon bleu and a package of instant mashed
potatoes, a tube of hearty buttermilk biscuits, fresh bananas and
cat food. He took his groceries, went to his car, and drove away
into the night. He hadn’t seen a soul. His mind was engaged with
what waited for him at home.

Dark. Lonely. Empty.

Gavin pulled into the rambler-style house at
8:30. His cat, a Burmese gray named Art, met him at the door,
loudly protesting his empty bowl. He spooned wet food into the
cat’s dish as a special treat before he did anything else. No
reason for Art to be miserable. The cat ate with his tail high in
the air, purring and growling softly.

He hit PLAY on his stereo, and the strains of
Dvořák spilled through his living room. He stood for a moment,
letting the music wash over him, moving his right arm in concert
with the bass. The music filled him, made him complete, and whole.
Art came and stood beside him, winding his tail around Gavin’s leg.
He smiled at the interruption, bent and scratched the cat behind
the ears. Art arched his back in pleasure.

Evening’s ritual complete, Gavin turned on
the oven, sprinkled olive oil in a glass dish and put the chicken
in to bake. It would take forty-five minutes to cook.

He showered, checked his work e-mail on his
iPhone, then ate. He took his time, the chicken was especially good
this evening. He sipped an icy Corona Light with a lime stuck in
the neck.

He washed up. 10:00 now. He gave himself
permission. He’d been a very good boy.

The padlock on the door to the basement was
shiny with promise and lubricant. He inserted the key, twisting his
wrist to keep it from jangling. He took the lock with him, holding
it gingerly so he didn’t get oil on his clothes. Oil was nearly
impossible to get out. He made sure Art wasn’t around, he didn’t
like the cat to get into the basement. He saw him sitting on the
kitchen table, looking mournfully at the empty spot where Gavin’s
plate had rested.

Inside the door, the stairs led to blackness.
He flipped a switch and light flooded the stairwell. He slipped the
end of the lock in the inside latch, then clicked it home. No sense
taking chances.

She was asleep. He was quiet, so he wouldn’t
wake her. He just wanted to look, anyway.

The Plexiglas cage was the shape of a coffin
with a long clear divider down the length—creating two perfectly
sized compartments—with small drainage holes in the bottom and air
holes along the top. It stood on a reinforced platform he had built
himself. The concrete floor had a drain; all he needed to do was
sluice water across the opening and presto, clean. He ran the water
for a few minutes, clearing out the debris, then looked back to his
love.

Her lips were cracking, the hair shedding.
She’d been without food and water for a week now, and she was
spending more and more time asleep. Her lethargy was anticipated.
He looked forward to the moment when her agonies were at an end. He
had no real desire to torture her. He just needed her heart to
stop. Then, he could have her.

He licked his lips and felt embarrassed by
his erection.

He breathed in the scent of her, reveling in
the musky sweetness of her dying flesh, then went to the desk in
the corner of the basement. No spiders and dust and basement rot
for Gavin. The place was clean. Pristine.

The computer, a Mac Air he’d indulged in as a
late Christmas present to himself, sprang to life. A few taps of
the keyboard, the wireless system engaged and he was online. Before
he had a chance to scroll through his bookmarks, his iChat chimed.
The user’s screen name was IlMorte69. He and Gavin were very good
friends. Gavin responded, his own screen name, hot4cold, popping up
in red ten-point Arial.

Gavin cringed. Sometimes Morte got to be a
little much. But what could you do? It was hard for Gavin to talk
to people, the online world was his oyster, his outlet. He had
other friends who weren’t quite as crude as Morte. Speaking of
which…he glanced at the listing of contacts and saw Necro90 was
online as well. He sent him a quick hello, then went back to his
chat with Morte.

Morte came back almost immediately.