To Trust a Stranger (34 page)

It was only as she saw several passers-by glance her way that she realized that she was yelling. From the corner of her eye, she saw that Sid, face red, fists clenched, was headed their way. A woman shopper complete with loaded grocery cart was punching numbers into her cell phone even as she kept looking at them, wide-eyed. Julie guessed that she was calling 911.

Julie could only pray that both men ended up in jail. “You have to listen to me,” Mac said.

“No, I don't,” she bit out. Then, grabbing the shreds of her dignity with both hands, she turned her back on him and stalked toward the sidewalk. A movement across the street in front of Carolina Belle caught her eye. As she identified its source, her lips pursed. Carlene Squabb had emerged from the shop and was coming her way, obviously having spotted her through the glass, an annoyed expression that Julie knew all too well on her face. Julie almost turned on her heel and headed in the opposite direction. Of all the things she didn't need right now, listening to Carlene bitch about how Julie was neglecting her was right up there at the top of the list.

“Julie, please. Just give me a minute.”

Mac caught her arm again, pulling her around to face him just as she reached the edge of the parking lot. Sid was closing fast, his nose bleeding, murder in his eye, but Mac didn't seem to notice, or care if he did. From the corner of her eye, Julie saw Carlene look both ways and step off the curb. It was only then that she realized that Carlene was wearing the pink sweater dress she herself had discarded earlier. Why on earth ... ?

A sudden blur of movement on the street caught Julie's attention.

Seemingly from out of nowhere a mid-size blue car hurtled toward Carlene. Carlene saw it coming: Julie could see horror in her widening eyes, her opening mouth.

Carlene tried to get out of the way, but there was no time. The car hit her with a sickening thump. She flew up in the air, twisting feet over head, limp as a rag doll as she seemed to cartwheel over the car.

Julie screamed, and, screaming, rushed toward where Carlene now lay limp and bleeding in the street.

25

CARLENE WAS DEAD. Julie could hardly believe it. Numb with shock, she walked out of the hospital at shortly after ten into the welcoming arms of the night. It was still hot, stickily humid, with a sprinkling of stars overhead and a beautiful crescent moon. Shivering at the cruel irony of such serene beauty on a night that had witnessed a terrible, brutal death, Julie was nevertheless grateful for the embracing heat. She was so cold that she felt as if she'd been turned to ice from the inside out; so cold that she felt like she would never be warm again.

Sitting there in that impersonal lounge with Carlene's family as they waited for news had been one of the most wrenching experiences of her life.

Carlene had been the victim of a hit-and-run. The police were investigating, of course. They'd talked to Meredith and they'd talked to Julie, and they'd talked to scores of other people as well. There'd been dozens of witnesses, a few of whom had actually had the presence of mind to get at least part of the license-plate number. Neither the car nor the driver had yet been found, but the police seemed confident that they would be. Julie prayed it would be soon. She found the accident horrifying in more ways than one.

She could not get past the fact that Carlene had been wearing Julie's own discarded dress when she was hit. Julie pointed that out to the officer who had interviewed her, and he had dutifully written it down, but she had a feeling that the information had not made much of impression and would wind up buried in a file somewhere and the consensus was, Carlene had probably been the unfortunate victim of a driver who was drunk, or high, or elderly, or a kid, who had then panicked. The police were confident that both car and driver would be found, and then all questions would be answered.

When Julie had asked her, Meredith had said that Carlene annoyed at being left to the tender mercies of a mere assistant, had been chain-smoking in the dressing room. She had dropped ashes on her own dress, which had burned a tiny hole in a particularly unfortunate spot on the bodice. Carlene had pitched a fit, blamed the whole fiasco on Meredith, and insisted that she could not possibly step outside the store in a dress with a hole in the tit. Meredith, not knowing what else to do, had invited her to take her pick from Carolina Belle's stock. Unfortunately, with her new implants, the only other garment in the store that would fit Carlene was Julie's stretchy sweater dress. So Meredith let her wear it.

And Carlene had died in it.

“You ever think that maybe walking alone through a parking lot at night might not be a good idea?”

The voice, coming from behind her as she headed toward her car made Julie jump even as she recognized it. She was edgy, she realized' nervous, and didn't have to delve far to find the reason why: Carlene dying in her dress had scared the pants off her. She was just now fulling realizing it.

“Go away.” She didn't even bother to glance over her shoulder.

Maddeningly, just knowing that Mac was behind her and she was therefore, physically safe made her nerves relax. It also made her hear; ache, and her temper heat.

“I know you're mad. I'm even willing to admit that you have a right to be. But I can explain.”

Having fished her keys out of her purse as she walked, Julie pressed the unlock button just as she reached the white

1nfiniti. Then she turned on him. Every muscle in her body hummed with tension' her eyes were blazing. '

“Exactly what part of go away don't you understand?”

The moonlight turned his hair to molten silver. It was reflected in his eyes, turning them silvery, too. It cast deep shadows beneath his high cheekbones, his straight nose, his firm chin. He looked tall and broad and achingly handsome standing there regarding her so gravely, and Julie hated him.

It scared her to realize that she hated him. Hate was too strong an emotion to feel for this sexy near-stranger who had slept with and betrayed her. She didn't even hate Sid anymore. She'd gotten over hating him long since.

No matter what he had done, Mac was a tiny, unimportant chapter in her life. A phase. She should have been mad, but she shouldn't have been hating him.

Mac grimaced, and stuck his hands in the front pockets of his jeans. “Look, Sid and I go way back, okay? When I stumbled across you, I admit that my first thought was that I could maybe get some information from you about him. But ... “

“Forget it,” Julie said through her teeth. “You're wasting your breath. At this point, if you told me the sun rises in the east I'd get a second opinion. Now leave me alone.”

She turned on her heel, presenting him with her back as she opened her car door.

“It ever occur to you that Sid might be trying to kill you?”

“What?” The question was so unexpected-and yet so in sync with her own uneasy feelings-that she stiffened and turned to face him again.

“Oh, not Sid himself He's not the type to get his hands dirty. What he might do is hire somebody-a professional. A hit man. Think about it: The girl who got killed today-she was wearing your dress, wasn't she? And coming out of your shop? Maybe somebody thought she was you. Maybe the same somebody who attacked you in your house. And maybe he's still out there. You've escaped him twice now. Maybe he's going to try again.”

Julie's heart leaped in her chest. Goose bumps prickled into life all over her skin. What he was suggesting was ridiculous, of course. Sid would never hire someone to kill her-would he? It was the stuff of bad movies.

She could barely keep herself from glancing all around, fearfully probing the shadows. If Mac hadn't been standing right in front of her, watching her narrowly to, she thought, judge her reaction, she would have done just that. But she refused to give him the satisfaction of knowing that he had succeeded in scaring her.

Even though he had.

“If you really believe that, you need to go to the police.” Julie was proud of how cool her voice sounded. She slid into her car, and prepared to close the door. His hand closing on the top of the window frame prevented her.

“They don't listen to me anymore-especially when it comes to Sid. Remember I told you that I got fired because the guy I was investigating set me up? That would be Sid.”

Julie's eyes widened. She stopped in the act of inserting her key into the ignition.

“You were investigating Sid?”

Her throat felt suddenly dry. “Why?”

“Drugs.” His eyes bored into hers. “At the time I thought he was running a drug operation, big time. Among other things.” For a moment Julie simply gaped at him. Then the sheer absurdity of the accusation hit her. Her brows snapped together, and she jerked the door away from him, closing and locking it before he could react. He stood there with his fists on his hips scowling at her through the glass. Julie started the car, then, unable to resist, rolled her window down the merest crack. “You need professional help, you know that? If I were you, I'd run, not walk, to the nearest treatment facility. Now good-bye.” She rolled up the window and shifted into reverse at the same time, leaving him standing there in the shadowy parking lot glaring after her. Thank goodness he'd finally strayed into the realm of the ridiculous, Julie told herself as she drove away. For a minute there, he'd really had her going. But imagining Sid-meticulous, blue-blooded Sid with his golf games and his business meetings and his fussy insistence on order and punctuality-as a drug dealer was too much. Even in the throes of divorcing him, she couldn't go that far. It was Mac's suggestion that someone was trying to kill her that had made her listen to him at all. For some reason, his words had seemed to strike a chord. They took on a resonance inside her that would not be dismissed no matter how far-fetched the rest of his suggestions might be. Julie realized that his warning echoed her own fears. Turning off the main drag into the labyrinth of narrow dark streets that led to her mother's house-it would be a cold day In hell before she stepped foot inside her own again; she supposed she was going to have to hire movers to retrieve her things, and beg Becky to supervise-she became conscious of one particular set of headlights that stayed a consistent half a block back, making all the turns she made, slowing down when she slowed, speeding up when she hit the gas. She was being followed. The knowledge broke over her like a cold wave. Julie's breathing quickened, and she reached in a panic for her cell phone.

Then she realized who it almost had to be: Mac. Slowly she put her phone down. If she was wrong, if this really was a hit man on a mission, she was going to feel dumb as a rock before she died. But she didn't think she was wrong. Just to be sure, she watched carefully in her rear-view mirror as the black Blazer passed beneath the only streetlight on the route. And it was a black Blazer. Mac was following her. That infuriated her so much that she was parked in front of her mother's modest brick ranch house waiting when he got there. By the time he pulled up behind her, she was already out of her car and advancing on him, cell phone in hand. . . He got out of the Blazer just as she reached it, shutting the door but leaving the motor running. For Josephine, Julie guessed in passing. She could see the poodle's fluffy white head peering at her through the window. The sight of Josephine cost her pang. She realized that somehow, over the course of this nightmare, she had fallen in love with Josephine. Certainly not with the jackass leaning against the side of the Blazer with his arms crossed over his chest.

“If you don't leave me alone, I'm going to call the police,” she threatened, waving her cell phone at him. He ignored that. He was, Julie thought furiously, good at ignoring things.

“You remember I asked you about Sid's first wife? You said she was completely out of the picture before you came into it. That's more true than you know: after an evening spent at a party with Sid, she was never seen again. Just walked off the face of the earth. I've been searching for her for years without turning up so much as a trace. Her name was Kelly. She was only twenty-two.”

“Are you trying to make me believe that Sid killed her?” Her voice quivered with outrage-and, if she was honest, just the tiniest, most infuriating smidgen of fear.

Mac shrugged. “I think it's more likely that he had her killed.”

“You're insane.” Julie took a deep breath. “If you really believe that, why don't you go to the police?”

“I was the police, remember? Once upon a time. I was a cop when I first noticed that Kelly Carlson was nowhere to be found, but the bottom line is, no witnesses, no bodies, no crime. The story was that the first Mrs. Carlson went home to her family in
California
. The powers that be at the department were fine with that-even though there was no family in
California
for her to go home to. Although she was from
California
originally, her parents had died before she married Sid. I can find no record of her anywhere on this planet after she left him. Now the department doesn't even want to talk to me. They might listen to you, if you went to them and told them that you think your husband's trying to kill you, but then again, they might not. There's no proof: not yet. And Sid and his family have some powerful friends.”

“You're trying to scare me!” And he was succeeding too; put together the right way, everything that had happened could be interpreted in such a way that it was possible to conclude that Sid had hired someone to kill her. But how unlikely was that? Sid was many unpleasant things, but she couldn't picture him as a cold-blooded killer. It was far more likely that Mac was adding two and two and getting five-or lying again for some nefarious purpose of his own.