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Authors: Lisa Jackson

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BOOK: You Don't Want To Know
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So far.
As a landlord, Reynolds had no tenant disputes.
Nor, apparently, any angry ex-lovers.
He rubbed the kinks from his neck as he reviewed his notes.
According to the will they'd found in a desk drawer, the heirs to Reynolds's meager savings account and her interest in the rambling old house included an out-of-state niece who was nine, the only child of her now-deceased sibling, and the local animal shelter, which, according to the terms of the will, was supposed to house her “babies”—a total of seven cats—until they died. He'd seen at least five of the felines when he'd first been called to the scene. Who the hell knew where the other two were? The first quintet had already been taken to the shelter; they'd round up the others today or tomorrow.
Cheryl Reynolds's cell phone, home phone, and computer records were being checked, but so far no red flags had popped up.
The house didn't appear to have been robbed . . . or at least it didn't look like it at first pass, but the crime scene team was still working the house and surrounding area.
It was still early in the investigation.
There was a lot of ground yet to cover.
Friends and neighbors might have seen or heard something.
A fingerprint might be found.
Someone might remember seeing a car or person out of the ordinary. Her taped interviews might unlock a clue. . . .
Lyons reappeared at the opening to his work space. She was tucking her phone into her pocket and had a package of peanut M&M's she must've grabbed from the vending machine located in the lunchroom near the lavatories. “Biggs brought up the idea that this could be the work of Lester Reece,” she said.
“The missing Lester Reece,” he reminded her, though he didn't add that he didn't think much of the sheriff's opinion. J. T. Biggs was a mediocre lawman at best. “Why would a killer who escaped from Sea Cliff hospital return to the one town where people would remember and recognize him?”
“He was in a
mental
hospital. Determined to be certifiable.”
“Paranoid schizophrenic, or something.”
She slit open the package of candy with her thumbnail. “The guy's nuts with a capital N. He could do anything.”
“Nah.” Snyder wasn't buying it. “I was around for that one. You weren't. Lester Reece wasn't any crazier than any of the other sick bastards we lock up. He just had a much fatter wallet and a damned good attorney.” Frowning at the image of Cheryl Reynolds on his computer screen, he added, “If you ask me, Lester Reece is fish food.”
“He killed his ex-wife, right?”
“Deena and her friend . . . what was her name?” he said, then snapped his fingers. “Mary or Marsha or . . . Maryliss, that was it. Thought I'd never forget it. Maryliss Benson. They were best friends, but at one time Reece had an affair with the friend, so who knows if his intended victim was the ex-wife or the ex-girlfriend? Cruel, privileged son of a bitch. Thought he was above the law.”
“Reece was a lady-killer, literally.”
Snyder snorted. “He was involved with a lot of women around here before anyone realized what a whack job he was. Even then, a few still hung out, got off on his fame or infamy or whatever the hell you want to call it.”
“Oh what a tangled web we weave,” she said as she popped a few of the peanuts into her mouth.
He laughed. He hated to admit it to himself, but he liked Morgan Lyons, all bristly five-foot-four inches of her. Sassy, smart, with a quick wit and a sharp tongue, she held her own with most of the veterans around the department even though she'd been hired less than a year earlier. For the five years previous, she'd worked for the Oregon State Police and had never really copped to why she'd jumped ship there. All he knew was that she was a good detective and too good-looking for his own good. As tightly packed as she was wound, she had breasts too big to completely minimize, a nipped in waist, and an ass that caused him and the rest of the male population to fantasize what she'd be like in bed.
He, of course, knew better. He had the two ex-wives to prove it, so Detective Morgan Lyons, sexy as she was, was off-limits. Beyond off-limits.
He wasn't that crazy.
Not anymore.
He'd trained his dick to be a little smarter. At least he hoped he had.
Besides, she was rumored to have a serious Bad-Ass of a former husband. The guy just happened to be an ex-cop who had a bad temper and was into authority trips. And, oh, yeah, he had a hard-on for guns, all kinds of guns. From assault rifles to Saturday night specials, the guy collected firearms.
Could be a lethal combination.
“How about we get a cup of coffee?” she suggested.
He glanced at his watch. “It's kinda late.”
“Quit being such a pussy. Haven't you heard of decaf? I'll buy you whatever fancy coffee drink you want and we'll talk to the barista. Check out Ava Garrison's story.”
“You don't seem to think much of her.” He grabbed up the jacket he'd just shed.
“I think she's a crackpot. She admitted it herself in the interview. And I saw the scars on her wrists. Not something a sane person would do.” She crushed the remainder of her bag of M&M's in a fist and said, “I'll even buy.”
He smiled. “Forget the latte. After we talk to the people in the coffee shop, let's head on over to O'Malley's. For a beer. And I'll buy.”
“You're on.” She almost smiled back.
Almost.
CHAPTER 23
“H
ow'd it go?” Wyatt asked as Ava walked out of the library after her interview with the police.
“Horrible. From what they can piece together, I might have been the last one to see her before she was . . . before she died, so that's why they were questioning me. They thought maybe I'd seen or heard something.” Shaking her head, she admitted, “I don't think I was any help at all.” She was still holding Noah's shoes.
Wyatt noticed the shoes and asked, “What's going on?” as she walked past him toward the stairs. Then, “Where are you going?”
“I want to find out who left these in the nursery.”
“Oh, Ava . . .”
“What?” she asked, and when he didn't immediately respond, she guessed, “This is really embarrassing for you. Your wife is a nutcase and that bothers you.”
“I just worry about you, Ava.”
“So worried that you hired a psychologist to monitor me?”
“To help you,” he reminded tightly.
She started to walk away again, but he jumped forward and caught her by the crook of the elbow.
“Just think, okay? Don't do anything that you'll regret.”
“Too late for that!” she snapped, and he winced as if stung.
“Is everything all right?” Evelyn McPherson asked, rounding the corner. Her eyes were clouded with worry, her fingers cradling a coffee cup, her boots clicking softly on the hardwood.
“Cheryl Reynolds is dead,” Ava pointed out. “How in the world could everything possibly be all right?” Ava's nerves were strung tight from the police interview.
“I'm sorry. You're right. How're you doing? Maybe we should talk,” the psychologist suggested in a soft tone that bugged the hell out of Ava.
Ava glanced at the woman in her designer boots and slim skirt, a soft sweater completing the ensemble. “I don't think so.” She turned, despite hearing her husband plead, “Ava, please . . . don't.”
Oh go to hell!
she thought, but kept her mouth shut. For now. Leaving Wyatt and Dr. McPherson in the hallway, she strode into the den where the family and staff had collected. They were all there, scattered around the room. Her relatives. Those who worked for her. Everyone who lived or was employed at Neptune's Gate, even Austin Dern, leaning against the bookcase in the far corner of the room.
There had been soft conversation over the hiss and pop of the fire, but it died away as soon as Ava stepped past Demetria, who stood near the doorway.
“How're you doing?” Trent asked, offering her the first sincere smile she'd seen in hours. He'd poured himself a drink and was warming the back of his legs on the fire. Ian stood next to him, a drink in his hand as well.
“Not great,” Ava admitted as she heard footsteps behind her. Wyatt and the good Dr. McPherson. Joining the party. Together.
Perfect.
“When are you ever great?” Jewel-Anne asked.
So it was going to be Antagonistic Jewel-Anne today.
Well, fine.
Bring it on.
Mr. T slunk through the shadows in the back of the room to finally settle down, hiding beneath the couch and peering out at everyone.
Jewel-Anne was huddled near the window in her chair with a doll, this one with straight black hair and wide, blankly staring blue eyes that opened and closed as it was jostled. Her knitting needles were quiet for once but were poking out of a ball of yarn visible in the pouch strapped to the wheelchair.
Next to her stood Jacob, looking like a biker-dude wannabe in his black leather jacket and camouflage pants and wearing half a dozen silver rings that only highlighted the tattoos across his fingers. A three-days' growth of beard added to the illusion that he was tough, that he wasn't the computer nerd he truly was.
Ava said to Jewel-Anne, “A friend of mine died yesterday. And she didn't just have a heart attack. She was murdered. So, no, I'm not okay.”
Jacob asked, “Why were the cops all over you?”
“Because I saw Cheryl yesterday.”
“As a friend or a hypnotist?” Jewel-Anne asked, her eyebrows rising over the rims of her glasses, though her surprise was clearly less than authentic.
Ava set Noah's now-nearly-dry shoes in the middle of the coffee table.
Ian's gaze followed her movement. “What's going on?”
“Aren't those Noah's shoes?” Khloe, cradling a coffee cup, asked. She sat with her husband and mother on a sofa tucked into the corner. Simon was holding her hand, and he seemed to glower up at Ava.
“Yep.” Ava looked across the room and noticed Austin Dern standing quietly in the corner near the bookcase, almost in the shadows. Again, Ava was hit by a hint of familiarity. Had she met him somewhere before?
Don't go there. Dangerous waters. Very dangerous waters.
“They were in his room,” she told them.
“Isn't that where they're usually kept?” Khloe seemed genuinely confused. “You still have a lot of his clothes.”
“I don't keep them wet. Not dipped in salt water.”
“What?” Khloe stared at Ava as if she were making it up, but at least Graciela, who, too, had touched the shoes earlier, was nodding. She stood near the entrance to the hallway leading to the kitchen and looked as if she'd rather be anywhere than in this room.
Catching Graciela's agreement, Khloe said, “Let me get this straight. You think someone
deliberately
dunked a pair of Noah's shoes—
those
Nikes—in the bay and then left them in the nursery for you to discover?”
“Maybe someone was trying to freak me out,” Ava suggested.
Jacob snorted. “You don't need any help in that department.”
“Hold on,” Wyatt cut in, glaring at Jacob, and even Dern seemed about to protest. Wyatt threw a glare at the ranch hand and muttered, “This doesn't make any sense.”
“I know. I was trying to tell you that when the police arrived earlier,” Ava said. She scooped up the small shoes and walked them over to Wyatt, who stood in the doorway. “Here. Feel them. Smell them!” She grabbed Wyatt's hand and dropped her baby's first serious pair of sneakers into her husband's palm.
“Shit, maybe he should taste them, too,” Jacob suggested, then, when Jewel-Anne hit his knee with her fist to shut him up, clamped his mouth closed.
“Jesus,” Wyatt whispered; then he did smell the damp leather. “You found them in the nursery?” he asked, though it had already been stated. “You were in Noah's room again?”
She bristled. Why was he turning this around?
When she didn't respond, Wyatt asked again, “Why did you go into his room?”
“It's not as if the nursery is off-limits,” Trent pointed out. “Ava can go anywhere she wants.”
Wyatt ignored him. “It just seems strange that after not going into his room for months, now you're in there all the time.”
“I saw someone in his room!” Ava didn't bother hiding her annoyance. “I was in the garden with Jewel-Anne earlier. She left and . . . and I looked up at the house and saw someone in the window.”
“Someone?” Wyatt repeated.
“He, she . . . was behind the curtains, but they were in Noah's room!” Even to her own ears, Ava sounded desperate. As if she were grasping at straws to explain herself. She felt every pair of eyes in the room focused on her and almost heard the unspoken thoughts whispering between them, thoughts suggesting that she'd really gone off the deep end this time.
Demetria. Graciela. Virginia. Even sullen Simon. Along with Khloe and everyone related to her. Ava tried not to sound overly anxious, but it was tricky. She reined in her emotions with an effort and somehow managed to keep her voice steady. Holding out a palm to ward off any interruption, she said, “I was alone. And . . . I just got this feeling that someone was watching me. You know how you sense someone nearby when you can't see them?” No one responded, but she caught a knowing, almost conspiratorial glance between Wyatt and McPherson. Nonetheless, Ava forged on. “When I looked up at the window to Noah's room, I saw a shadow behind the curtains.”
“A shadow? Or a phantom?” Jacob sniggered.
“Let her speak,” Dern ordered. Arms folded over his chest, he hitched his chin at Ava. “Go ahead.”
Encouraged, she said, “So, I ran up to the nursery, and when I got there, whoever it was had left.”
“Poof.” Jacob tossed up his hands as if there had been a small explosion.
“That's when I saw the shoes, by the closet,” Ava declared, skewering Jacob with a glare of her own.
“Big deal.” Jewel-Anne this time.
“Maybe it is,” Trent cut in. “Let's go with what she says. So, then, who did it? Who took the shoes, dropped them into the water, and then brought them back to the nursery for Ava to find?”
When he said it like that, Ava felt silly, as if she were making a mountain out of a molehill. Cheryl Reynolds was dead and she was worried about wet shoes? No wonder everyone thought she was losing it. . . . Trent didn't pick up on her change of heart and gestured to Wyatt, Ian, and himself. “Not any of us. We were on the mainland. You too,” he said, indicating Evelyn McPherson. “By process of elimination, that leaves the rest of you.”
“If anyone was really in there,” Demetria countered. She was standing in the doorway to the hall leading to the kitchen. Half in and half out of the room, as if she didn't know whether she was included or not. Just like Graciela.
Despite second-guessing herself, Ava wasn't going to let the conversation travel down that dangerous path. “
Some
one put the shoes there.”
“The last time I saw those shoes,” Khloe said solemnly, “they were in your closet, Ava.”
“In
my
closet?” Some of her bravado slipped.
“You kept them there because they were Noah's favorites. Remember?” Khloe was nodding, as if encouraging her to recall.
“I . . . I don't think so.”
“On the top shelf, next to his favorite books.”
No, this was wrong. But there was a grain of truth in there somewhere. She remembered reaching up to get a purse and had seen them. . . .
“I saw the shoes in the closet this morning,” Graciela put in, looking at Ava as if she truly were a mental case. “That's why I asked you why they weren't in the closet when I saw you with them. I meant
your
closet.”
Oh, God. This was all turning around.
“If . . . if you saw them in my closet this morning, who took them out and . . .” It was getting clearer now what was going on here. She was being railroaded into thinking that she'd stolen the damned shoes herself, dunked them in the bay, then put them in Noah's room on purpose, when she was having one of her spells, the kind she never remembered. “You all think I did it,” she whispered, disbelieving. But a part of her, that splintered part of her mind, suddenly wasn't so sure.
“No one said that,” Wyatt assured her, yet there was a hint of irritation beneath his placating words, as if he wanted her to snap out of her funk, to remember, to return to the woman she'd once been, the one he'd married.
“What about security cameras?” Dern asked, and his gaze traveled to Jacob. “You know, they've got those things now, not just audio monitors but videos as well.”
Jacob lifted his shoulders as if to say,
Not my responsibility
.
“We didn't have them when Noah was an infant,” Ava said, shaking her head. “I wish we had, but, no, there are no monitors in place.” So, just like when her child disappeared, there was no film of anyone walking into his room and snatching him up. Her heart started to ache again, and she closed her mind to that life-altering mistake.
Everyone was still looking at her.
In for a penny, in for a pound, she thought, drawing from some inner strength. They already thought she was nuts. Maybe it was time to really prove them all right. She caught Dern's dark gaze, saw his reservations, the questions in his eyes, but plunged on.
“I know you all think I'm losing it.”
“No one said that,” Wyatt said again.
“I see it in your eyes,” Ava said.
“You did jump into the bay the other night,” Jewel-Anne reminded her. Prim and self-righteous. “And you hallucinate.”
“Maybe.”
“No ‘maybe' about it,” Jacob said.
This wasn't going well, but then what had lately? “Then what about this?” Withdrawing the key from the pocket of her jeans, she held it up, then put it on the table next to the damp shoes.
BOOK: You Don't Want To Know
2.94Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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