You Don't Want To Know

  “What’re you doing here?” she asked. These were the first civil words she’d spoken to Ava since their argument in Wyatt’s office.

  Ava considered not answering her but really didn’t have the energy for that kind of game-playing and one-upmanship. “Thinking.”

  She rolled along the uneven path and stopped at the bench, her gaze focused on the stone. “Me too. I guess it helps. I miss him, too, you know,” she added, almost to herself, and Ava felt a little of the ice around her heart melting. “That’s why I come here. Because somehow Noah seems closer.”

  “Yeah.” Ava’s voice was husky, raw with emotion. “I thought you had physical therapy.”

  “I blew it off.” She slid a glance up at Ava. “It’s not as if it’s doing any good.”

  “But the doctor said—”

  “The doctor,” Jewel-Anne snorted. “What does he know? He just writes me prescriptions and suggests occupational therapy or a shrink or things to keep me busy, but none of it means crap.” Tears filled her eyes, and she brushed them hastily away before saying, “You’re a good one to talk. You never do what you’re supposed to. Oh, by the way, Khloe told me to remind you that you’ve got another appointment with the shrink. She’s on her way.”

  Ava’s heart sank at the thought of another session with Dr. McPherson. The last thing she wanted to do was sit around and talk about her “feelings” with the psychologist. Then again maybe she could shock her with the sex dream.

  Jewel-Anne’s phone beeped and she pulled it out of her jacket pocket. “Oh, great,” she said as she read the text. “Mrs. Marquis de Sade wants me in the ballet studio. Pronto.” She scowled at her phone, then tucked it into her pocket. “I guess I’d better go or she’ll come looking and be all pissy.” Deftly, she maneuvered a quick one-eighty with her chair and rolled away toward the house.

  Ava watched her leave and wondered about all the times she’d spied Jewel-Anne in the garden, the wheels of her chair glinting in the sun. She’d often wondered what it would be like to be confined to the chair and had felt compassion and, yes, even guilt that her younger cousin was wheelchair bound, but then Jewel-Anne would say or do something so heartless and downright cruel that all of Ava’s empathy evaporated.

  Give her a break. At least try. What would it hurt?

  Alone again, Ava knelt down and ran her fingers over her son’s marker. Thank God there was no little body lying in a casket beneath the leafless, thorny rosebushes whose blooms had perished months before.

  And that was a blessing.

  So to think that she was closer to him here was an illusion.

  Swallowing hard, she closed her eyes for a second, tried to get a grip on things. Again, she felt as if she were being watched, as if she wasn’t alone in the garden, that there was another presence. Her skin prickled and it wasn’t from the cold. She opened her eyes, her gaze scouring the overgrown shrubbery. She found no one other than a seagull swooping toward the bay.

  And yet . . .

  Looking over her shoulder at the house, she thought she saw movement in one of the upper windows, a curtain shifting in . . . Noah’s room?

  Her heart clenched.

  Who would be in her son’s room?

  It’s nothing. Maybe Graciela dusting or . . .

  But she was already moving, her footsteps hurrying, faster and faster, up the steps, through the back door, running through the kitchen and nearly knocking over Virginia and a hot tray of biscuits, dashing through the hallways and taking the front stairs two at a time.

  At the second floor, she didn’t hesitate, just ran like wildfire to Noah’s room. The door was ajar.

  Heart in her throat, breathing hard, she stepped inside. More memories washed over her and her oh-so-willing mind’s eye wanted to see him in his crib, but he wasn’t there.

  But . . . her heart jolted when she spied the shoes.

  Noah’s shoes.

  Left as if he’d just kicked them off.

  No!

  Stepping into the room, she smelled the scent of salt water, and then she noticed the shoes were wet, water puddling on the edge of the carpet.

  Eyes rounding in disbelief, she edged closer, snatching up the tiny red sneakers with the Nike logo. They smelled salty from the seawater and her throat closed. “Noah.” Nearly collapsing, she thought of her son, conjuring up his image. In her fractured mind’s eye, she witnessed his tiny body floating downward in the cold waters of the bay, his hair caught floating and swirling in the ebbing tide, his eyes, wide in his little white face, staring up at her, silently accusing her.

  “Baby!”

  One little hand reached up for hers, but she was like stone, unable to move.

  “Mama!” he cried, and she let out a scream.

  “Noah!”

  But he wasn’t with her; she wasn’t on the edge of the bay but in his room. “Oh, God, what’s happening to me?” she whispered as the image of her son faded and she turned only to find she wasn’t alone.

  A man stood in the doorway, filling it, his dark silhouette blocking her escape.

  CHAPTER 21

  “Dear God, you scared the hell out of me!” Ava cried, one hand flying to her throat. The man in the doorway wasn’t some sinister figure hell-bent to scare the wits out of her but the ranch hand her husband had hired.

  “Didn’t mean to,” Dern said, his gaze drifting from her face to the tiny pair of shoes dangling from her fingers and dripping salt water onto the carpet.

  “They’re Noah’s,” she said. “I found them here, on the floor near his closet.”

  “But they’re wet.”

  “Salt water,” she said, her throat tight. What had Tanya said? What if someone really wants you to believe you’re going off the rails . . . way off the rails?

  Well, that someone was doing a damned fine job of it. But who would do something so cruel, so pointedly painful? And why? If someone was definitely trying to freak her out, they were doing a damned good job of it. She thought of the people who lived here, all of whom had access to this room. Her stomach knotted as she remembered her argument with Jewel-Anne and her fight with Jacob, though they weren’t the only suspects, just the two who shot to the top of the list.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Do I look all right?”

  One side of his mouth lifted. “I think you’re a whole lot tougher than you give yourself credit for.”

  She only wished it were so.

  Dern took one little sneaker from her hand and sniffed it. “You’re right. Salt water.”

  “Someone put them here. Wanted me to find them.”

  “Why?” He seemed genuinely confused.

  “So I’d seem crazy. Or crazier.”

  “Who?”

  “Damned good question.” She snorted a little and wrapped her arms around herself. “I’m not the most popular person on the island.”

  “But you’re the boss. Everyone here has to report to you.”

  “Except for my relatives.”

  Dern placed the wet shoe on a side table, walked to the closet, and opened the door. All of Noah’s clothes were hanging on tiny hangers or folded into the shelves built into the closet. His shoes were placed in a neat row, none out of place, no space left for the wet red Nikes.

  “Is everything else where it’s supposed to be?”

  After placing the second shoe down beside the first, noting the pair made a wet smudge on the table’s glossy, recently dusted top, she walked to the closet and resisted touching the little outfits her baby had worn. “I think so. I haven’t looked in here in a long, long while . . . not since I went to—” She caught herself just as the name of St. Brendan’s was about to roll off her tongue. “Before I left for a while.”

  She wasn’t kidding anyone. No doubt Dern had heard the rumors that she’d spent time in a psychiatric ward, but she wasn’t going to confirm them. At least not yet.

  “Why would anyone do this?” He was shaking his head, his dark eyebrows drawing t
ogether, one hand rubbing at the stubble along his jawline as he thought. “Maybe it was an accident.”

  “An accident? Someone accidentally had my son’s shoes and dropped them in the ocean and then brought them up here and left them neatly by the closet?” she asked, unable to hide the sarcasm in her tone. “No, someone deliberately did this. Left them where I would find them.”

  “Why?” he asked again.

  “I don’t know. It’s some kind of sick prank!” Anger crawled up her back as she picked up the shoes and started for the door. “Don’t you see? Someone’s getting their kicks by tormenting me.”

  He caught her elbow with his hand. “Don’t.”

  “Why the hell not?” she snapped, fury and frustration burning through her.

  “Because there’s bad news.”

  “You mean more bad news,” she threw out, but her sarcasm died on her lips when she saw how serious he’d become. His eyes were somber and dark. “What?”

  “I got a call from Ian. That’s why I came to the house, to find you.”

  She waited, a new anxiety building.

  “He said that you know a woman named Cheryl Reynolds.”

  “I do.”

  His grip on her arm tightened slightly and his jaw tightened a bit. “She’s dead, Ava,” he said softly.

  “What?” The small shoes fell to the floor, thumping and bumping along the gallery.

  “It looks like she may have been killed.”

  “Murdered?” Cold despair slid through her guts. “No . . . this . . . is wrong.” She wouldn’t believe it. “Another sick, twisted idea of a joke!”

  “I don’t think so,” he said, and her anger slid away. “I called a friend I know at the marina. He said rumors are flying, and he saw cop cars and an ambulance race up the hill earlier.”

  This had to be wrong. Had to! “But I just saw her,” she protested even as she remembered hearing the distant wail of sirens earlier.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “No . . . I don’t want to hear this . . .” She couldn’t, wouldn’t believe that Cheryl was dead. No, not just dead, but murdered? Heart drumming, denial pounding through her brain, she dug her cell phone from her pocket and started to call Ian when the phone rang in her hand.

  Tanya’s name and number came up on the screen.

  “Hello?”

  “Oh, God, Ava, did you hear?” Tanya jumped in. “About Cheryl? That someone killed her? Right in her own home?” She was frantic, and the pit in Ava’s stomach turned sour. “I can’t believe it, just can’t. Nothing like this ever happens in Anchorville!”

  “Slow down,” Ava suggested, though Tanya was only voicing her own thoughts. “You’re serious?”

  “As a heart attack!”

  “Okay . . . okay, so what happened?”

  “No one knows. The cops are being pretty closemouthed, but I hear things, y’know, at the salon, and it sounds like some intruder just walked in and killed her. God. My client, well, Ida Sterns, tends to exaggerate, but she said they found Cheryl in her basement with her cats all around. One of them was even lapping up her blood!”

  “Ugh!”

  “But it’s true that Cheryl’s dead, Ava, and someone freakin’ killed her!” Tanya seemed near to hyperventilating. “The whole town’s on edge, just like they were when Lester Reece escaped from Sea Cliff. It’s nuts! Oh, Lord, I’ve got to run and pick up the kids, but . . . I know you see Cheryl. I just thought you should know. Oh, I’m getting another call. Shit! It’s Russell! Just what I need! God, what does he want? Oh, crap. He probably heard about Trent.”

  “What about Trent?” Ava headed downstairs and into the foyer, toward the tall windows flanking the door. Dern was right behind her and stopped when she did. She looked through the glass to the gray day beyond. Across the water, the town of Anchorville was spread upon the shore, and there were strobing red lights on the hill near Cheryl’s house.

  Dear God.

  Tanya was still talking about Trent. “We just had a couple of drinks. NBD. Look I’ve got to go!” And with that she clicked off.

  Numb, Ava turned to Dern. Something must have shown in her face because he grabbed her arm again, steadying her. “I’m sorry,” he said, and as he stared down at her, his fingers warm through her sleeve, she flashed on her dream. She remembered the stranger in her bed, the imagined lover sliding over her naked body with his own, the strength of him pressed against her abdomen, the fire of intense, hard-edged sexual desire shining in his eyes. The hands that had splayed over her spine, fingertips touching the cleft in her buttocks, had been strong, determined, and now, standing in this room, she felt that same wanton desire that he’d evoked, a curiosity about his prowess in the bedroom, a need to experience all that he’d promised.

  If only in her mind.

  She drew her arm from his clasp and put some space between them. “It’s just so hard to believe,” she said, clearing her throat and knowing her embarrassment was evident in the heat of her cheeks. She thought of Cheryl again and realized how little she really knew about her. She’d been married twice, but Cheryl had never mentioned that she’d had children, nor had Ava ever seen any pictures of children mounted on the walls or placed upon the small tables of Cheryl’s studio. “I just don’t understand why anyone would want to harm her.”

  “That’s always the question,” he said as they heard the elevator hum to life, and soon Jewel-Anne and Demetria met them in the foyer.

  “Did you hear?” Jewel-Anne asked. She was ashen, her eyes round behind her thick glasses.

  “About Cheryl?” Ava asked. “Yes.”

  “It’s so unbelievable . . . But it’s all over the news.” Jewel-Anne was fingering her iPhone.

  “You knew Cheryl?” Ava asked, and was rewarded with a perturbed look.

  “Anchorville’s a small town, Ava. Of course I knew her. Everyone did.” She bit her lip. “Does anyone know where Jacob is? Is he on the island? He’d want to know.” Before anyone answered, her fingers were flying over the tiny keyboard as she, presumably, texted her brother.

  “It’s awful,” Demetria whispered, shaking her head as if to deny the tragedy. “There hasn’t been a murder around here in years. Since Lester Reece was convicted. You don’t . . . think he’s come back, do you?”

  “No!” Khloe cut in quickly, coming from the kitchen.

  Jewel-Anne stiffened in her chair. “I doubt it,” she said. “He . . . he just seemed to disappear.”

  “Probably with help from his daddy,” Khloe cut in.

  Was it Ava’s imagination or did Dern’s mouth tighten, almost imperceptibly? In a heartbeat, the expression had vanished, just like Reece had years before. Despite the rumored sightings of Anchorville’s most infamous criminal, Lester Reece had either died or somehow managed to elude the police. If it was the latter, then Khloe was right. If Reece had escaped justice, no doubt he’d turned to his tight-knit family. Reece was the son of a local judge who had finally stepped down amid rumors of adultery and graft, but he’d denied his son nothing. Privileged and handsome, Lester had also had a cruel streak that had eventually escalated to murder. Though Reece had been convicted, his clever, high-priced attorney had found psychiatrists who declared him to be mentally unstable and he’d ended up at Sea Cliff rather than behind prison bars. He’d escaped from the hospital and his disappearance had cost the hospital administrator, Ava’s uncle Crispin, his job.

  “He was seen recently,” Demetria insisted. “By Corvin Hobbs. Just a few months ago.”

  “Who would believe Corvin?” Jewel-Anne said curtly. It was true. A local fisherman, Hobbs was known for his tall tales and affinity for Johnnie Walker.

  “Looks like we’ve got company,” Demetria said as she peered through the window.

  Ava followed her gaze and saw a boat cutting through the water, its wake a white, churning tail. She recognized the family craft with several people inside. Not far behind was a second boat boldly marked as belonging to the sheriff’s dep
artment.

  As the first boat slowed before pulling into the boathouse, Ava recognized Ian at the helm. With him were his twin, Wyatt, and, of course, Evelyn McPherson.

  They had just disembarked when the boat from the sheriff’s department pulled up to the dock. A woman helmed the craft. With her was Detective Wesley Snyder. The only person missing was the sheriff.

  “Perfect,” Ava said, glancing up at Dern. “Looks like we’re going to host a party.”

  “Wonder why?” His scowl was deep.

  “Because they all figured out that I saw Cheryl yesterday. They probably hope that I saw something that will help with the investigation.” Deciding to get out of the line of fire, Ava headed for the stairs to the second floor.

  Dern followed. “It may be more than that,” he said as he joined her in the upper hallway.

  “Meaning?”

  “Maybe you were the last person to see her alive.”

  “You think they might consider me a suspect?” Ava asked in disbelief. “I hardly knew her.”

  “I don’t know. But someone’s messing with you. Big-time.”

  She heard a step on the landing and saw Graciela, dust rag in her hand, wiping down the stair railings. She, too, was staring out the windows as the entourage from the boat landing walked up the hill to the house. “What’s going on?” she asked.

  “Looks like we have company,” Ava said.

  “And the shoes?” Graciela swept Noah’s sneakers from the floor. “What’re they doing here?”

  “I found them. In his room.”

  “Wet?” Graciela asked, eyeing Ava as if she were untrustworthy.

  “Yes.”

  “But they weren’t in the closet?” She seemed confused as she lifted the tiny Nikes by their heels.

  “No! Not in the closet.” Ava snagged the shoes dangling from the maid’s fingers.

  “But why?”

  “Oh my God!” Khloe’s voice preceded her footsteps, and when she rounded the corner below them, she was stuffing her phone into the pocket of her sweater. “Why didn’t you tell me about the murder?” she demanded of Ava.