Tell Me You're Sorry (16 page)

“Is Mom home?” Alison asked.

“Haven't seen her,” he replied with his mouth full.

She frowned at him. “God, look at you. Pig out much?”

“I'm starving! I didn't have anything for lunch except your stupid carrot sticks!”

“Sorry,” Alison muttered. She retreated upstairs and wandered back into the kitchen. She pulled a cold Diet Coke from the fridge, and counted two more cans in there. She opened the soda and took a swig. Grabbing one of the twelve-packs, she cradled it under her arm and headed down the little hallway that led to the garage. There was just a bench in there—and some coat hooks. Alison opened the garage door.

She stepped right into a wall of exhaust fumes. Dropping the twelve-pack of soda, she staggered back. The cans spilled out of the package with a clatter. But through the haze, she couldn't see where they went. Alison immediately covered her mouth with her arm. But a noxious gassy smell was still in her nostrils. She blindly reached around and felt for the button to open the big door. Jabbing it, she heard the garage door hum as it began to ascend. An old blanket was caught on the inside door handle for a few moments, and then it fell to the ground. The ceiling light went on, but the place was wall-to-wall smog. She realized her mother must have left the motor running, but she didn't hear it now. Had the car overheated and died? Alison could barely make out the Vista Cruiser through all the exhaust.

But with the big door open, the toxic fog started to dissipate. She could see a tiny, red, blinking glow within the vehicle—a light on the dashboard. She thought she saw someone in the front seat.

She'd heard of people killing themselves by sitting in the car and leaving it running inside the garage. They usually put something along the bottom of the garage door to keep the exhaust from seeping out.

She suddenly realized what that blanket was for.

“No!” Alison screamed. All at once, she started to choke and cough. She quickly buried her nose and mouth in the crook of her arm again. Then she hurried toward the Vista Cruiser. Almost tripping on a soda can, she fell against the side of the car. She'd let her arm down from her face for a moment, and started choking on the fumes once more. This close, she could see the car's front and back windows were open. Frantically, she tugged at the passenger door handle.

The Vista Cruiser's interior light went on as she opened the door. Through the smoke, she could see the empty bourbon bottle on the passenger seat—along with a prescription vial that looked like her mother's sleeping pills. Her mother's purse lay on its side on the car floor. The red “check engine” light kept blinking on the dashboard.

Her mother was slumped behind the wheel with her face pressed against the car window. With her eyes closed, and her mouth open slightly, she could have been asleep. Her complexion was rosy and healthy-looking—only she wasn't breathing.

“Mom!” she screamed. She started coughing uncontrollably. Every time she caught a breath, she cried out to her mother again. Alison tugged at her sleeve and shook her lifeless arm. She knew her mother was dead. Yet a part of her kept hoping she'd wake up.

Alison would later tell herself that it couldn't have been a suicide. Despite everything to the contrary, it had to be some kind of bizarre accident.

Her mother had had a bad premonition earlier that day.

And the last person she'd thought about was herself.

C
HAPTER
E
LEVEN

 

S
tephanie hadn't noticed the man at the table beside her until he abruptly got up and left. She sat at a small dinette-style table at the Beaverton Bakery Café by the ticketing area. The bakery had red-and-white-striped awnings over the service counter. The floor was black-and-white checkerboard tile. Their croissants and European blend coffees were a regular guilty pleasure for Stephanie before she started one of her jaunts. She still had fifteen minutes before she had to report for her flight.

She'd already eaten most of her chocolate croissant and was starting on a coffee refill. She was on her cell phone with the private detective, J. B. Church. At times, she might have talked at full volume to compete with all the airport announcements. Was she one of those obnoxiously loud cell phone talkers? Maybe that was why the man had left in such a huff. Or maybe he'd just had a plane to catch.

The discussion with her private detective was pretty discouraging. He'd already e-mailed her last week about attending Lacee Roth's memorial service in Boston. Lacee's friends and family members had lost touch with her over three years ago—long before Lacee moved to Chicago and married Brent Farrell. She'd been a crystal meth addict, and gone through all her money. She'd also borrowed or stolen a great deal of cash from family and friends. By the time she got out of recovery for the second time, even her immediate family members were keeping their distance. However, she seemed to be getting her life back on track around the time she moved to Chicago. She'd always been a bit impulsive and rash. So no one had been particularly surprised that she'd suddenly moved to a different city—or that she'd married a guy who turned out to be an embezzler.

“Anyway, you've had over a week to review this stuff,” J. B. Church was telling her on the phone. “And I think you'll agree with me, there are some similarities to Halle Driscoll's history, but not really. You can make a lot of conjecture about Halle suddenly and quite uncharacteristically throwing her life away on crystal meth. And you can make assumptions about Lacee possibly going back to her old ways once she married Brent Farrell. But there's no proof to back that up. There's really no connection between these two women—or the two cases. You saw the photos I sent of Lacee. She doesn't look at all like Halle . . .”

“But what about—”

“Excuse me?” someone said. “Excuse me . . .”

Stephanie looked up at the pretty brunette in her early thirties. Hovering by the table, she wore sleek designer glasses and a trench coat. She looked nervous.

“Just a second, J.B.,” Stephanie said into the phone. She gazed up at the woman. “Yes?”

“I'm sorry to interrupt, but did you notice the man sitting next to you who just left?”

Stephanie shook her head. “Not really. At least, I didn't see his face . . .”

“Well, from my table, it looked like he might have reached into your purse and taken something.”

Stephanie grabbed her bag off the chair, opened it, and looked inside. “J.B., let me call you back, okay?” she said into her cell. She didn't even wait for a response before clicking off.

“I thought you should check to see if anything's missing before he gets too far away,” she heard the woman say.

Searching through her purse, Stephanie didn't look up. She nodded, “Yes, thank you.”

“He seemed kind of suspicious . . .”

Stephanie found her wallet and pulled it out. She was only halfway relieved. She checked that her cash and credit cards were there. They were, thank God. Then for extra measure, she made sure her keys were in her purse, too. She let out a grateful little laugh once she had them in her hand. She suddenly remembered her carry-on bag on the other side of her chair, and checked to make sure that was okay, too. “I don't think he took anything,” she said, finally looking up at the woman again.

“Well, I'm glad. You can never be too sure.”

“Thanks very much.” Stephanie tucked her keys and wallet back in her bag. “It was nice of you to look out for me.”

The woman smiled. “Well, we girls have to stick together. Have a nice trip.”

Then she turned and walked toward the security gates.

Stephanie lost track of her in the crowd. With a sigh, she set her purse in her lap. She sipped some coffee and then phoned her private detective back. “I'm sorry about that,” she explained. “I had a little false alarm emergency here.”

“Well, I'm afraid this whole venture has been a false alarm of sorts,” J.B. said on the other end. “I made a few calls to Toledo about this Vanessa Black Ingalls, who died in the fire in Lake Geneva. Her parents are dead, no siblings. She left behind some friends in Toledo, but stayed in touch with them after she moved to Chicago. You saw the photo I sent. She doesn't look like the other two. And the situation is different. One basis for your trying to connect these cases is that the widowers got married again P-D-Q. Well, Dick Ingalls waited well over a year before he married Vanessa. And his first wife's death wasn't a suicide. The death certificate showed she was done in by a cerebrovascular accident—or in layman's terms, a stroke. The details of these cases aren't even similar.”

Stephanie gulped down some more coffee. It was lukewarm. “Well, I'd like you to keep digging, and find out more about this Vanessa person.”

“I'm sorry. I'm not going to waste any more of my time or your money traveling to Toledo to chase down some ghost. I know you think you're on to something. You may even think your life's in danger. Maybe you're a little paranoid after that incident you told me about—you know, with the guy trying to break into your hotel room two weeks ago?”

“Now, wait a minute—”

“I don't blame you,” he said, cutting her off. “It would've scared the crap out of me, too. But you shouldn't let it validate the notion that you've stumbled upon some kind of
conspiracy
. It's probably just an isolated incident.”

“So—you're done working for me, is that it?”

“In a nutshell, yeah,” he sighed. “Listen, you hired me to find evidence that Halle Driscoll or someone she knew was responsible for those murders on Thanksgiving night. I'm sorry I just wasn't able to come up with the goods.”

“So am I,” Stephanie said. She took another swig of coffee.

“You're trying to connect what happened to your sister's family to these other unrelated deaths, and it's just not—”

“Not completely unrelated,” she cut in. “My brother-in-law was friends with Dick Ingalls back in high school. They both ended up widowers and—”

“And both ended up dead—along with the new wife and children,” he interjected. “Yes, I know. But try telling that to the police. Two scumbag punks with criminal records have already confessed to killing Halle Driscoll and your sister's family in New York. A house fire in a Wisconsin resort town took the life of Dick Ingalls and his family. And in suburban Chicago, Brent Farrell embezzled and lost a small fortune—so he killed his family and himself. He even e-mailed a suicide note to his lawyer. All of these cases are closed—
closed
, Stephanie, resolved as far as the authorities are concerned
.
Maybe there are some similarities. But these are different situations, different states, and different jurisdictions. I'm sorry, but you're grasping at straws. And I can't keep taking your money.”

Rubbing her forehead as she listened to him, Stephanie slumped back in her café chair. Another announcement came over the airport's public address system, but it sounded a bit fuzzy. Stephanie couldn't make out the words. Then again, she wasn't really listening anyway.

It seemed J. B. Church was just one more person who had become sick and tired of her. She'd succeeded in totally alienating Ryan Farrell the night of his family's funeral two weeks ago. Earlier this week, she'd been on the phone with Scott's mother and asked her something about Dick Ingalls and Scott. Marlene had started crying. “You need to stop,” she'd said in her broken voice. “Please, Stephanie. I can't do this anymore. . .”

Jim was fed up, too. He was seeing less of her, because of family demands and business trips. He called her from the road, and whenever she started talking about Rebecca or her family, he'd get impatient and give some excuse for hanging up. Sometimes, she wondered if he was really out of town during those conversations. Or was he just pretending to be on the road as he did while at her place talking with his daughter?

“You still there?” J.B. asked.

“Yes,” she sighed.

“I'm sorry I can't be more help to you,” he said.

“Me, too. You can e-mail me your bill, and I'll send you a check as soon as I get back from this rotation. That's next Thursday.” Stephanie started to sip her coffee again, but it had gotten cold, so she set it back down. “Thanks for trying,” she said.

Then she clicked off the phone. “Shit,” she muttered.

Stephanie tossed the phone into her purse and stood up. She suddenly felt dizzy. Her chair tipped over with a clatter. She told herself she'd just gotten up too fast. A few people were staring at her. Did they think she was drunk or something?

Taking a deep breath, she bent down to pick up the chair and set it upright again. She tossed out her coffee, napkin, and the last few bites of her croissant. She'd lost her appetite.

She checked her bags through the express security gate for airline personnel, and then reported in. She smiled at all the usual people and made the usual chitchat. But all the while, she felt this vague panic. Her heart seemed to be pounding furiously, and a part of her just wanted to sit down and cry.

She tried to keep her mind on her work as she did her customary walk-around inspection of the Bombardier Q400. She felt better, stepping outside for a few minutes. It was a beautiful spring morning. But just as she was looking at one of the propellers, she felt a crying jag coming on. Stephanie was terrified someone might see her—the plane's captain—sobbing uncontrollably out there on the tarmac. It seemed like something out of a Charles Addams cartoon, and the image in her head suddenly made her want to laugh and cry at the same time.

Once she was inside again, Stephanie managed to pull herself together. Passing through the Jetway, she kept a smile on her face and nodded to the passengers in line. Inside the plane, she said hello to the flight attendants, Chad and Claudia. But Chad frowned and squinted at her. “Are you doing okay?” he whispered.

“Of course,” she said with a laugh. “I'm fine.”

It didn't dawn on her until she settled into the cockpit that something might indeed be wrong with her. She suddenly felt claustrophobic, and that same vague panic swept through her again. This had never happened to her before. The controls, lights, and switches all seemed blurry for a few seconds.

Her co-pilot, John Manzuk, a pale, skinny redhead in his late twenties, climbed into the sheepskin-lined seat next to her. He immediately started talking about how he couldn't find a Harry Potter book for his daughter at the airport Powell's. John was a nice guy and a good pilot. But he was a bit of a chatterbox. Part of her wanted to tell him to shut the hell up.

With a shaky hand, she reached for her headset and put it on. Talking over him, she started the crosscheck.

Chad stepped into the cabin, and handed her a computerized printout. “Here's the manifest,” he said. “We have sixty-six souls on board.”

While she finished the crosscheck, she could hear Chad making the announcements: “Ladies and gents, this is Chad, along with the lovely and talented Claudia of your cabin crew. On behalf of Captains Stephanie Coburn and John Manzuk, welcome aboard Pacific Cascade Skyways Flight 1284, with service to beautiful Spokane, Washington. Our flight time to Spokane is thirty-nine minutes . . .”

Stephanie was aware of the tower talking to her on the headset. Some of it seemed like gibberish. What was going on? The lights on the dashboard in front of her were suddenly so vivid and colorful. The instrument panel seemed to be breathing in and out. Closing her eyes for a moment, she kept a hand on the throttle, and told herself to calm down. She'd done this hundreds of times. They gave her the okay from the tower. That much she heard. She then carefully announced: “Cabin crew, please prepare for gate departure.”

She told herself that whatever this was—a panic attack or the start of a nervous breakdown—she'd get through it. She could hang in there for 39 minutes or just under an hour from gate to gate. If she bailed now, there would be a huge delay and a lot of pissed-off passengers. Plus the airline would be furious. She was already strapped in, and the ground crew signalman was giving her the okay to back away from the gate.

“Cabin door's closed and secured,” Chad announced.

John was repeating instructions from the tower. As she worked the wheel, throttle, and switches, it was all by rote. The plane started backing away from the gate, and she thought,
See, you can do this . . .
She kept her eyes fixed on the signalman. In his orange and yellow vest, he looked to her like a lobster, waving his claws in the air. Everything beyond the windshield seemed to be rippling, as if they were underwater.

“Stephanie, are you okay?” she heard John ask.

Part of her wanted to say no. Something was very definitely wrong. She had no idea what was going on. She kept thinking she had a job to do, which meant getting people to their destination on time—no matter what.