“She was sure hard on you,” Connie went on as if sensing the protest forming on Elizabeth’s lips. “Everyone saw it, but I guess you were smart to hang in there. Get your real estate license. Handle her clients. Never let her get to you.”
Elizabeth made a noncommittal sound even though Connie had been wrong on that score. Hatchet-faced Mazie had definitely gotten to Elizabeth more than once. The older real estate agent would smile warmly at her clients, then, as soon as their backs were turned, she’d bare her teeth and snarl invectives at any and all coworkers she thought had screwed her in some way—and she always thought she’d been screwed in some way.
As Connie floated away, waving to another colleague, Elizabeth pushed the door open and left the restaurant.
Elizabeth didn’t move from the chair facing the window. Not wanting to think about Court or her marriage, she let more memories of Mazie flood her brain.
Mazie believed her younger assistant was trying to usurp her clients, which made helping her a double-edged sword. Though Mazie needed someone to run interference for her, she was highly suspicious of anyone who did, certain they were just humoring her while they tried to steal her clients.
Elizabeth was attempting to help a woman as demanding as she was rich, but Mazie had the idea that Elizabeth was trying to poach on the woman and the potential sale.
“Don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing,” she warned, her black eyes boring into Elizabeth.
“I’m not doing anything,” Elizabeth answered carefully, sensing Mazie was about to erupt.
Somewhere in her fifties, Mazie always told people she was in her midforties and was able to pull it off owing to hours at the gym that kept her thin and tough as rawhide. The fact that Elizabeth was in her midtwenties grated on Mazie who always assessed everyone around her as competition, whether real or imagined. She glared at Elizabeth as if she were deliberately goading her. “You met with the Sorensons when I wasn’t here,” she accused.
“They asked where you were. They came to the office to see you, but you weren’t here.”
“I already had another appointment!” Mazie practically shouted. “I can’t be in two places at the same time!”
“I said you would be back in the office later.”
“You made them wait for me?” She sounded aghast.
“They wanted to, Mazie.”
She pointed a bony finger at Elizabeth. “And then you talked to them and talked to them and talked to them. So friendly. They just love you now, don’t they?”
Elizabeth didn’t answer as her blood pressure rose. She realized that someone had been blabbing to Mazie about the Sorensons, probably Pat, the gossipy receptionist, and selling the older woman a bill of goods about Elizabeth’s intentions. “They asked if they could wait, and I said it was okay, that’s all,” Elizabeth said through her teeth.
“I’m sure.”
“If you don’t want me to work with them, I won’t.”
“I don’t want you to work with them,” Mazie snapped back.
“Then, you’re on your own.” Elizabeth stalked away, boiling. Die, she thought. Disappear. Evaporate. Go away permanently.
Now, Elizabeth shuddered. She set the empty wineglass on the table next to her without realizing it.
The next afternoon she related the story to her Moms Group, though she didn’t tell them her childish wish that Mazie die, of course. The moms were sitting on outdoor benches while they watched their kids playing on Bright Day Preschool’s outdoor equipment. It was the mothers’ custom to convene about the same time every school day and meet with their friends while their kids packed in a last few minutes of playground time before everyone went home.
Deirdre listened to Elizabeth’s complaints about Mazie and said, “Old bitches like that create misery and mayhem, and then they die.”
Remembering Deirdre’s words startled Elizabeth for a moment, they were so prophetic. She realized her glass was empty, poured more merlot, and took a sip, lost in her memories.
“Hopefully.” Vivian made a face and bobbed her ponytail in agreement. “She sounds like a total nightmare.”
Elizabeth agreed. “She is a nightmare.”
Springing to her feet, Vivian called sharply to her daughter, “Lissa, be careful!” The little girl was trying to climb up the slide’s ladder on Little Nate’s heels, all the while nudging him to move more quickly. “Lissa! Do you hear me?”
From a bench nearby, Jade yelled, “Nate, watch out!”
Elizabeth turned to see Chloe stomp to the ladder, pump her fists onto her hips, and give Lissa a piece of her mind. Unhappily, Lissa backed down, making a mean face at Chloe before racing to the monkey bars.
Jade glanced over at Elizabeth and she knew Jade was thinking. About another time when, from behind a post, Elizabeth had seen Little Nate slip on the jungle gym and get his foot caught, hanging precariously. At Elizabeth’s scream of warning, Jade had rescued him in the nick of time before he fell headfirst.
“How did you know?” Jade had asked in wonder.
Elizabeth hadn’t been able to come up with a plausible answer. Because there hadn’t been one. “I just caught a glimpse,” she’d lied to her friend.
Jade’s eyebrows had pulled together, puckering her forehead as if she didn’t understand, but she’d let it go.
Oblivious to the look Jade sent Elizabeth, Tara said, “Karma will get bullies like Mazie every time.” She shaded her eyes with one hand, stood and watched the jungle gym where a group of kids had gathered.
“Maybe,” Elizabeth muttered.
“Things’ll change. They always do,” Jade said. “Just when you think you can’t stand it one more minute, something always happens.”
Elizabeth wasn’t so certain. “I hope you’re right. It’s a mystery how Mazie ever makes a sale. She’s like Jekyll and Hyde, nice to the client but god-awful to anyone else. Before I got my license, I was seriously thinking about quitting.”
Deirdre’s green eyes were serious. She warned, “You do that and she wins. End of story.”
“That’s right,” Vivian agreed.
“I just meant quitting the agency,” Elizabeth had assured them, “not giving up on real estate altogether.” That was a bit of a lie. In truth she’d been close to taking a break from her career to concentrate on home life as things were rocky with Court. Make that rockier. Their marriage had never run smoothly.
At a meeting with the half dozen other moms who belonged to the larger Moms Group, Tara had cornered Elizabeth in the conference room of the preschool. “So how’s it going with Crazy Mazie?” she asked.
Elizabeth mentally kicked herself for ever mentioning the nickname.
Several other of the women tuned in, all wanting to know what had happened at the real estate agency.
More than a little miffed at Tara for bringing up the sensitive subject in front of everyone, Elizabeth downplayed her answer. “Surprisingly a lot better,” she said with a smile she didn’t feel. “She’s been a lot nicer lately, so maybe we were just going through a rough patch.”
Everyone except Jade seemed to buy her story. She regarded Elizabeth with questions in her dark eyes, but the conversation turned back to the next preschool function—“fun night”—a type of carnival aimed at securing more donations from the parents and nearby businesses. At least for the moment, the subject of Elizabeth’s relationship with her boss was over.
Six days later, Mazie was dead.
According to all reports, Mazie had driven her car off I-55, her Mercedes going airborne to crash on the road below. She’d been rushed to a local hospital, but succumbed to her injuries a few days later. Mazie had never awakened from her coma.
Elizabeth was shocked, sick, and disbelieving. She immediately thought back to her conversation with her friends in the Moms Group and cringed inside.
When Vivian called later and whispered, “Oh, my God, Elizabeth! Oh, my God,” Elizabeth held her phone in a white knuckled grasp and trie
d with all her might to pretend that she thought it was just an odd and sobering coincidence.
“It’s . . . it’s horrible,” she whispered. “I can’t believe it.” Staring at her pale reflection in the window over her kitchen sink, she added, “I guess, bad things just happen.” But she’d hung up shaken.
And bad things happen when you wish them so.
The thought made her nearly throw up in the sink. She splashed water over her face and somehow pulled herself together as she mentally repeated the mantra it’s not your fault. It’s not your fault.
When her other friends called, she dealt with them as she had with Vivian, whispering words of shock and horror as those emotions were real.
As she sipped Court’s “special” merlot, Elizabeth stared out the window. Neither she nor Jade had brought up the jungle gym incident again, but sometimes she felt Jade’s gaze lingering on her as if puzzling her out, questions forming in her mind. Jade had half-guessed about Elizabeth’s gift of foreshadowing.
But she hadn’t a clue about Elizabeth’s gift for causing death.
Do bad things just happen? Elizabeth wondered. “Bad things like that? Did they? If so, what about Officer Unfriendly?” she whispered.
She watched the storm clouds scud across the sky and felt the same coldness inside that had enveloped her the first time someone had died and she’d wondered if she’d been at fault. Impossible, right? Crazy. And yet eight months earlier . . .
Officer Seth Daniels of the Irvine Police Department pulled her over when she was traveling five miles over the speed limit. Really? Five miles over the speed limit? In Southern California? That was hardly worth stopping someone. Elizabeth almost laughed. It felt like it was breaking some unspoken, sacred code to pull her over for such a minor offense.
She said as much to him as he stood near the open window of her car, traffic moving behind him. Her comments brought a cold smile to his face that was a little spooky. When her easy, half-joking persona failed to get results, she tried reasoning with him, but he just gazed down at her implacably, that icy grin never quite leaving his face, as if he were enjoying the show.
She got the feeling he savored her discomfort, so she dropped all pretense of friendliness and said, “You’re kidding, right? Five miles over?”
“Not kidding,” he responded, writing her up a four-hundred-dollar ticket and handing it to her with a flourish.
What an asshole! Her blood pressure hit the roof. Feeling her lips compress, she snatched the ticket from his hand and threw it to the passenger seat, never taking her eyes off the officer.
Daniels, a man in his late forties with male pattern baldness marching over his scalp and hiding beneath his hat, said with a faint sneer, “You beautiful women think you can get anything you want.”
Elizabeth almost ripped up the ticket in front of him but had somehow managed to hold herself back; he would’ve probably arrested her on the spot.
Shaking his head, he added, “Have a nice day,” and headed back to his cruiser.
All the way home she fumed, her head filled with vile forms of retribution for Officer Unfriendly.
When she went to court to have the amount of the ticket reduced, there he was, still smirking. She forced herself to make eye contact with him, giving him her coldest glare packed with negative thoughts, the uppermost one being she wished he would just disappear forever.
She got that wish.
A month to the day of her traffic court appointment, he pulled someone over who then yanked out a gun and shot him straight through the heart. Just hauled off and popped him. The killer then sped away. Did the deed, drove off, zigzagging through side streets, the stolen plates that had been on the vehicle tossed onto the road, no fingerprints recovered. No arrests had been made to date, though the crime had gotten plenty of press and the police were determined to catch the cop-killer.
Elizabeth, standing at the kitchen island, nearly collapsed as she read about Daniels’s death in the newspaper that Court tossed aside before going to work one morning. The headline jumped out at her and she went into a state of shock, her heart galumphing once, then pounding so hard in her ears she could scarcely hear.
She had trouble reading the article as her hands were shaking violently and she was forced to drop the pages onto the counter where she steadied herself. Her breath came in fast gulps while her vision telescoped down to a black dot.
You wished him dead and now he is!
She didn’t quite pass out, but almost. She told herself it was a coincidence, that was all—nothing more sinister than an officer pulling over the wrong person, a maniac with a gun. . . .
Elizabeth bit her lip and set her wine on the side table. Officer Daniels’s death was long before Mazie’s accident, which had shaken her further. She’d tried to convince herself it was another situation that had nothing to do with her. She’d almost believed it.
Until Court’s death.
What were the chances? Three people she’d wished would disappear had died. It just couldn’t be coincidence.
I’m normal, she told herself as she had so many times over the last year. I’m completely normal. I lead a normal suburban life.
Except now I’m a single mother because my husband’s dead.
Suddenly tired, she got up from the couch, took her glass to the kitchen, rinsed it out, and put it in the dishwasher. She glanced down to the pile of papers on the section of counter that she used as her catchall. Detective Thronson’s name and number lay on a piece of paper atop the various recipe books, coupons, junk mail, and bills strewn in an untidy pile.
She ignored it all and put a call in to Tara as she opened the refrigerator door and peered inside, hoping to spy anything within that nutrient-bleak interior that she could pull together and create some kind of good meal. Impossible. She’d have to come up with plan B.
“Hey,” Tara answered. “How’s it going?”
“Fine, I guess. Or fine as it can be. My sister-in-law left and I think I’d better go grocery shopping or Chloe and I might just starve. Okay if I pick her up on the way back?”
“Perfect,” Tara said. “Everyone’s getting along.”
Elizabeth smiled for the first time that day. “A miracle.”
“Yeah, it might not last long.”
“I’ll hurry,” she promised, clicking off her phone, then snatching up her keys and purse and heading to the garage. As she climbed behind the wheel of her black Ford Escape, she hesitated, key about to be jammed into the ignition. What had Barbara asked? If the SUV that had been reported to have been racing with Court’s BMW had been dark, like Elizabeth’s. Another coincidence? The car that maybe had been playing some kind of freeway tag with Court was similar to hers?
A drip of cold fear slid down Elizabeth’s spine.
Don’t even go there.
Setting her jaw, she jammed the key into the ignition and switched on the engine. As the garage door lifted and the gray light of the afternoon spilled into the gloomy interior, she told herself that she was being paranoid, searching for connections that probably didn’t even exist.
She pulled out of the drive and hit the automatic switch, closing the garage. Staring into the leaden sky, she couldn’t shake the feeling that something bad was happening to her. Something very, very bad.
Chapter 5
January in Southern California was a revelation to Ravinia Rutledge. The weather was usually sunny and warm in the dead of winter. Even when it rained, it wasn’t really cold, although at night the temperature could sure as hell plummet; she knew that from sleeping outside more times than not.
It had rained hard the night before and she’d taken refuge in a local Starbucks, sipping hot coffee until the storm had passed.
The morning had dawned bright and clear with white fluffy clouds floating across the blue sky. As she sat with her back propped against a palm tree in Santa Monica, she thought about her long journey from Oregon and the comparative safety of the locked gates of Siren Song
, her home near Deception Bay. It had been weeks since she’d started on the quest that led her ever southward, but she hoped she would finally find her cousin, Elizabeth Gaines, the reason she’d started the journey in the first place.
Ravinia suspected the good weather wouldn’t last. She’d learned January was the rainy month in Southern California. “The rainiest month,” one know-it-all type SoCal-er had declared when he’d realized she was from Oregon and had never been out of the state before.
She hadn’t even been five miles from Deception Bay before this trip, but she’d declined telling him that as it would have been another reason for him to go off on the wonders of California. She liked the state, but Mr. SoCal kind of pissed her off with his better-than-thou, know-it-all attitude. He was just someone she’d met on the train and they’d parted as soon as they’d reached the Los Angeles station, but she’d had hours of listening to him.
She’d arrived in downtown Los Angeles about four days earlier, having come from the San Francisco area. Though she was careful with her cash, she’d seen no way to get to Los Angeles by hitchhiking unless she worked her way down Highway 101 and she was pretty sure that would take forever, time she didn’t have. Instead, she’d caught a train that had taken her across the California countryside, through Modesto and Stockton, then into Bakersfield, where she’d been transferred to a bus, which finished the trip and dropped her off at the Los Angeles train station, a bizarre fact, but there it was. When she’d asked why the train didn’t go all the way from San Francisco to LA, Mr. SoCal had quipped, “This is the land of cars. Get used to it.”
If she’d had a driver’s license, she might have taken his advice. As it was, she was a slave to public transportation and she’d found San Francisco a whole lot more workable in that department than LA. But then, she was altogether new to traveling, having spent the greater part of her nineteen years inside the gates of Siren Song, the lodge located outside the town of Deception Bay on the Oregon coast, where she’d been hidden from the world along with her sisters. Her aunt Catherine, the woman who’d chosen their particular way of life, had always claimed it was to protect them from the evil forces that had destroyed their mother, Catherine’s sister, Mary, whom Ravinia didn’t even remember. Ravinia had rebelled against the restrictions and had always felt that the whole keep us all safe mantra was a manifestation of Aunt Catherine’s own fears and basic weirdness . . . well, until recently. Now she knew there really were evil forces at work. Evil people, anyway . . . and that’s why it was urgent that she find Elizabeth and warn her, make sure she wasn’t being targeted by those who wanted to harm their kith and kin.