Bad things, p.27
Bad Things, page 27
Josie.
He’d always liked her. Maybe loved her a little. But any of them would be fine ... Miami, especially, and ... oh, yeah . . . Kerry. He really wanted her. He’d been thinking about her a lot, too. Kerry . . .
Where the fuck was his car?
Oh.
Empty lot near the Blarney Stone.
He stumbled over that way, head down, across the near-empty street. Even the cars had gone home. What time was it? Oh, yeah. Meant to check his phone and forgot.
He fumbled inside his back pocket again but kept moving forward. He was near the Blarney Stone’s rear entrance. There were a couple of steps up to the back door and a wooden alcove to the right. He’d made out with more than one lovely lady there. He sure would like to bring Kerry here ... run his hand up her ass, press her to him.
“Kerry . . .”
Maybe one more drink? With the guys? His friends? Forrest should still be there, maybe Sean, maybe even Killian.
He headed up the stairs, grabbed onto the rail, and damn near lost his grip on the phone again. “Fuck,” he spit out.
The phone was lit up, but he had to get his face in front of it to unlock it: 1:48 a.m. Whoa. Much later than he’d thought. He watched the padlock icon on his phone slip open. Did he need to use the phone? It seemed like—
WHAM.
Egan’s head exploded and he sprawled on the steps. What? What?
His hand sprang to his head. Something hit him. Something hit him hard! He half-twisted to look upward.
“What . . . ?”
A black-gloved hand clenched around a rock high above his head.
WHAM. WHAM. WHAM.
The rock slammed into his head over and over again.
“Kerry . . . I . . . knows . . .” His eyes rolled around in his head.
Then he collapsed on the steps in a pile of loose, brainless flesh.
Chapter Nineteen
Doctor: That brings us to Egan Fogherty. You were responsible for his death, too.
Patient: He was bipolar. We all knew that. And bipolar people have a high rate of suicide. So he killed himself. I wasn’t anywhere around him.
Doctor: He was bludgeoned to death.
Patient: I heard he was on drugs, too. Another one of Diana’s victims. She really had her hooks into everyone. The ones that are still alive probably have massive drug problems. You should check it out.
Doctor: The police already have.
Patient: Yeah, well ...
Doctor: It’s unlikely he bludgeoned himself to death.
Patient: Ha, ha, Doc. Okay, it wasn’t suicide. He just pissed off a lot of people. Coulda been any one of them who did it. Egan was sick. No one liked him.
Doctor: There’s proof you killed him.
Patient: I doubt that very much.
Doctor: You killed both Diana and Egan because they knew what you’d done to Nick and why. Both of them had seen you at Diana’s apartment, and they were starting to understand your motivation.
Patient: Then why didn’t I kill the hypnobitch, huh? “Miss Nina”? The one Diana went to see? Surely someone as sick as me would’ve taken her out, too.
Doctor: Nina Gudner has always maintained she didn’t know anything about what Diana did or didn’t recall from their session. But Diana told Kerry Monaghan about it, and when you learned that, you changed focus. You killed Diana to cover up Nick’s death, and you targeted Kerry.
Patient: Okay, fine. You’re gonna say what you’re gonna say.
Doctor: You felt Kerry was also zeroing in on you.
Patient (suddenly furious): Egan said she was!
Doctor: What did Egan say?
Patient: “Kerry knows . . .” That’s what he said, Doc. Kerry knows! Diana called her, too. Talked to her, and then she couldn’t leave it alone. Hooked up with Cole Sheffield and kept after it. If you’re expecting me to be sorry about what happened, you’ve got a long wait ahead of you. And look what she did to me!
Doctor: It’s often said that violence begets violence.
Patient: That bitch deserved everything she got and more.
* * *
Sunday morning, one a.m. by her bedside clock. As Kerry glanced at the glowing red numbers, she realized Cole’s arm was slung over her and she was snuggled up against his side. She closed her eyes and recalled in vivid detail every moment of their recent lovemaking. The memory of his breath in her ear, the beating of his heart, the rhythmic thrusting of his body that she arched to meet, her fingers digging into the muscles of his back . . . Unbelievable. All those years in between and here they were again.
She opened her eyes again and saw her mask on the nightstand. She’d clasped his hand and started to lead him to the bedroom, but they’d practically stumbled in their haste. Ripping off clothes and touching each other. Then ripping off more and falling onto her bed. She’d had no time to straighten up her room. Had had no thoughts of lovemaking.
Her thoughts turned to certain moments of their time in bed together, and she smiled, pressing her face into his chest. He stirred, his hand going to her hair, his fingers tangling in it.
“You awake?” he asked lazily.
“Mmm.”
“We left that Thai food on the counter.”
“You hungry?” She propped herself up on one elbow and looked down at him.
“For what?” He waggled his brows at her and she grinned. Then she sobered, feeling a bit like a traitor to Nick’s memory.
“We could eat in bed,” she suggested.
Fifteen minutes later they were seated side by side on her bed. Kerry had a robe tossed over her shoulders and was digging into a white box of massaman curry with a fork. Chopsticks were too tricky and she was ravenous. Cole was in his boxers, leaning back against her headboard, equally engaged in some pad Thai.
“Gonna be a short day tomorrow,” he said with a glance at the clock.
“I didn’t intend to take you to bed,” she said.
“Coulda fooled me.”
“I mean, I was planning on having dinner, but then ... Vaughn . . .” She’d told him the gist of their conversation while they were getting their meal. “He just pissed me off so much, and it reminded me of how much time I’d wasted, and I just . . .”
“Kissed me?”
“Yes, kissed you.” She leaned in and kissed him again, on the cheek this time.
“I’m sorry about Nina,” she said when she pulled back. “I don’t want to get in your way, but I want to help. I just can’t stand to do nothing. I know you can’t share information with me, but how about if I lay out some things? Just my thoughts. What I feel, what people have said. You can nod or shake your head, or not even get involved. I just want to work through some stuff. I need to. My head’s full of stuff.”
“Okay.”
“Okay?” she asked, peering at him closely.
He half-smiled. “Go ahead. Shake something loose. I could use another perspective anyway.”
“If it’s still any kind of question, I know Nick wouldn’t kill himself. Someone killed him. Maybe accidentally, but now, with Diana’s murder, I don’t think so. I think they’re connected.”
“You got a theory?” Cole asked, digging around in his white box for a few last noodles of pad Thai, then set the box, chopsticks inside, onto her nightstand.
She handed him her box and fork and he added it to the crowded nightstand top. “Well . . . no . . . I really can’t see why anyone would hurt Nick.”
“What about Diana?”
“Someone purposely killed her. Went into her bedroom and strangled her.”
“Whoever that is could think you know more than you do, that Diana confided in you. You were the person she called.”
“She called me twice at three a.m. I talked to her the first time, but the second time no one was there.” He didn’t respond, and Kerry felt her skin break out in gooseflesh. “Do you think it was ... Diana’s killer?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’re afraid you’ll scare me. I think it was Diana and she just couldn’t talk ... because the other answer, that the killer called me on purpose, is just too ... I can’t think about that.”
“Don’t think about it.”
She eased into his arms, fitting herself against him. He put his arm around her. She was growing sleepy, she realized. Small wonder. Stifling a yawn, she said, “I think Diana was killed because she was remembering whoever was in her apartment. Going under hypnosis woke something up in her brain. Something she wasn’t sure of. She told me that. And she told everybody at the memorial service. It wasn’t a secret. I warned her to be careful, like you’ve warned me. I think she was starting to realize who’d killed Nick, and whoever that was silenced her.”
“I agree,” he said, giving her more than she’d expected.
“But why Nick?” she asked. “I always thought everyone loved him. His friends, his family. Maybe there’s some business associate who thought they got screwed. Chad Worster?”
“Worster has done fine with or without Nick.”
His dry tone prompted Kerry to ask, “Is that right?”
“I don’t see how Worster could ever have thought he’d been screwed.”
“Maybe there’s something else there, then? Envy or something we don’t know about.”
“Maybe,” Cole said.
“Nick had been coming back to Edwards Bay a lot lately, to his hometown and his old high school friends. I’ve met them over the years, but he reintroduced me to them, so when I moved here, it was like they invited me to be part of the group.”
“What do you think of those friends?”
Encouraged that he wasn’t closing her out yet, she asked, “You mean, do I think they’re involved in his death? I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Tell me about ’em.”
“Well, I like them okay, the ones I know. Josie seems to want to be friends more than some of the others. Diana, yes, she treated me like I was someone to count on. I don’t really know Miami. She’s generally been with Killian whenever we’re out, which is the only time I see her. Egan is . . .” She trailed off.
“What?”
“Pushy. Aggressive? You kind of want to pull away from him. Someone said he was bipolar, so . . . I guess I try hard to be nice, when in fact I kind of want to get away from him. It makes me feel bad to say it.”
“You gotta be honest to get to the truth,” said Cole.
“I don’t know Taryn well either. She’s more impatient. I get the feeling she just wants me to disappear. Like I came in and took Nick from her or something. Stole her best friend. She wants to be the expert on him, although everybody acts like Josie and Nick were the ones involved.” She shrugged. “I just never thought Nick would have an affair with a married woman. He had a real sense of fair play.”
Cole nodded.
“And then there’s Forrest . . . and Sean . . . Forrest can be a little friendlier than’s comfortable. Not like Egan, but he’s got a way of looking at you that’s, I don’t know. Nick called him a horndog.”
“Apt,” said Cole with a humph of agreement.
“Sean’s more remote. In his own world, in a way. Then there’s my boss, Randy. Whenever he’s talked about Nick it was almost with reverence. Nick had made it, and Randy, even though he’s running his dad’s company, doesn’t really feel like he has yet. His wife, Angie, is possessive and doesn’t like women—at least she doesn’t like me, and she got in a fight with someone at the memorial service.”
“Who?” Cole asked curiously.
“A woman named Sheryl. Maybe it was Sheryl from the bank? I saw her at the memorial service. She works at The Bank of Edwards Bay and I think she’s a friend of Angie’s, or maybe was, now. Angie can’t stand any other woman talking to her man.”
“That’s the bank started by Kent Roker’s family?”
“I was there the other day with Jerry, adding my signature to his accounts. Sheryl helped us.” She shrugged. “And then there’s everyone else. Other high school friends who aren’t part of the A-Team . . . and the dads. . . .”
Cole grunted. “The football dads. I talked to some of them at the memorial service. They went on about football, mostly. From the era their kids were in school. It’s their prime bonding subject. I got an earful about Killian’s prowess and his unfortunate ankle injury that kept him out of college ball.”
“That was the conversation?” She could hear her own skepticism.
“It’s fascinating to them. Nick apparently was partially responsible for the ankle injury.” He related the circumstances of the “horsing around” incident that had caused concrete to fall on Killian’s leg.
Kerry listened to the words but also his heartbeat. Feeling herself start to yearn toward sleep, she stifled a yawn and said, “It’s a lot about high school, isn’t it?”
“Appears that way.”
“You know, I saw Randy’s dad today. Dropped some papers by. Every time I see him, he talks about Randy’s girlfriends from high school. I think he thinks I’m one of them. He told me I was a four, which is the highest amount of points.”
“Hmm. Sounds like he was trying to compliment you.”
“Yeah. But ... it was creepy.”
“Old guys. Glory days.”
“Yeah . . .” she murmured.
They settled into each other’s arms and fell asleep.
* * *
Sunday.
Miami parked on the gravel strip in front of her parents’ home and hurried up the front walk. Their house was a three-bedroom ranch in a pocket of three-bedroom ranches on the east side of town, close enough to hear the dull wash off the freeway, which Miami had pretended was the sound of the ocean when she was a little girl. Her great-aunt and -uncle had owned it once and sold it to Miami’s parents. They were now living with their daughter, who relied on Miami to give her a break whenever she could. For Miami’s part, she enjoyed visiting them. It was warm and uncomplicated, being with them, listening to her uncle’s garrulous talk and her aunt’s fussing. She loved them and wanted them to be proud of her. Would they be, if they knew? she often wondered. Their disappointment was one of the reasons she’d kept quiet for so long.
The house itself was worth some money now, Miami supposed, and once upon a time it had been her parents’ pride and joy. In recent years, however, the wooden fence that bounded it on three sides had weathered and fallen into disrepair, the grayed boards along the south side leaning toward the house as if they were trying to reach it.
Her long black coat protected her from the frisky breeze that threatened to turn into a gale if given enough time as she reached the front steps. She was between the morning shift and the evening, neither of which was normally hers. She’d agreed to cover Toni at the desk in the morning, and a guy named Hal in the evening. In between, she normally would have stayed on property rather than deal with the ferry or the drive from The Pier back to her parents’ house, but today she’d felt antsy and, well, it was time to talk to her father and mother.
Unlocking the front door with her key, she yelled, “Mama?” while heading to her bedroom, the smallest of the three. She’d moved back in two years ago, the day she’d recognized she couldn’t afford her small Edwards Bay apartment; a temporary solution, she’d told herself... She just wasn’t willing to accept help from the Keenans any longer.
She tossed her coat on the bed, her small purse beside it. She stared at both items for a moment, thinking about what she actually owned in this world. The purse and her coat were about it, or at least they symbolized how little of a mark she’d made to date. She knew her friends never thought in the same terms she did, but they didn’t feel the weight of history either.
“Mama?” she called again, walking down the short hallway. The house wasn’t large enough for her mom not to have heard her. She headed past the maple nook table, the kitchen a U-shape to one side, and out the back door to the yard. Her mother, a rain hat covering her wavy, steel-gray hair, was examining her planted tomatoes. She saw Miami approaching out of the corner of her eye and turned and smiled at her daughter.
“You’re home,” her mother said.
“Just for a minute or two. I’m still taking over Hal’s shift. Umm, is Dad here?”
“He’s at the store. He’ll be home around six. What is it?” she asked, picking up on Miami’s tension.
“I . . . I . . . want to, need to, talk about high school.” She ran her hands up her own arms. Maybe she should have kept her coat on. The gray clouds overhead seemed to be pressing down on her.
Her mother turned back to the tomatoes. Margarita Miller knew what her daughter was about to say and didn’t want to hear it.
But Miami had had enough of lying and covering up. “I’m going to talk to someone ... maybe a counselor or something.”
Her mother continued staring straight ahead. Margarita didn’t know the whole story. She only knew the little bit Miami had been able to get out before she was cut off by her father. The subject had been taboo since that day, right before graduation.
“I’ve . . . uh . . . made a decision. Some terrible things have happened. Nick Radnor, and now Diana . . . I think they both were murdered.”
“Murdered?” Her mother swung back to her, her brown eyes wide.
“It’s all coming out. Ugly stuff. I’m not going to be able to avoid it. None of us are.”
“Well, it’s certainly not your fault.”
“But I didn’t speak up. I didn’t tell. And Nick, those last few weeks he came back to Edwards Bay . . . He was going to tell, Mama. He was going to do the right thing. Even with all his success, he was sad. It was all going to come out.”
Her mother suddenly shook her finger at her. “You had it the worst. Far worse for you than that Josie girl and the other ones.”
“No, I—”
“Yes! Worse for you.”
Miami thought back to that last year of high school. She’d made mistakes. Big mistakes. She should have said something then. “Worse for Lisette,” she whispered.
“You know what I mean. That was a tragedy, no doubt. But you’ve been locked into yourself. A prisoner of something I’ve never understood!”
