You Don't Want To Know

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

  “How’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. “Someone 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.

  “A key?” Jewel-Anne said with a little disbelieving laugh. “What’s it to?”

  “I don’t know. I thought someone might tell me.”

  “Because . . . ?” Jewel-Anne prompted.

  “I found it. In my pocket, and I didn’t put it there.”

  She felt rather than saw Wyatt’s shoulders slump, and from the corner of her eye, she noticed that the psychologist’s lips had pursed a little.

  “Is it important?” Trent asked, and for the first time since she’d seen him, he, too, seemed unsure of her, of where she was taking the conversation.

  “I have no idea where it goes, what lock it opens.”

  “Maybe it doesn’t open anything,” Ian offered up. “It looks old.” He crossed the room, plucked the key from the table, and, eyeing it, said, “If it bothers you and you don’t know where it belongs, why don’t you just throw it away?”

  Wyatt’s eyebrows shot up, silently encouraging her to do just that.

  Ava couldn’t. Not yet. “I think it could be important. That someone left it in my sweater for a reason.”

  Ian rolled his eyes. “Really? It’s just a key. No one snuck into your room and slipped it into your sweater in the dead of night while you were sleeping. Enough with all this old cloak-and-dagger stuff. If someone wanted you to have a key, they would have handed it to you and said, ‘Here, this is the key to . . . whatever’ or ‘Did you lose this?’ or ‘Hey, I found this. Know where it goes?’ ” He glanced around the room at all the somber faces. “It’s no great mystery, Ava, and it has nothing to do with your quest to find Noah. It’s just a damned key that you probably put in your own pocket and forgot.” To make his point, he tossed the key into the fire. “There!”

  Ava gasped.

  Ian added, “Problem solved.”

  Wyatt was already crossing the room. “That isn’t necessary.” He threw Ava’s cousin a dark look. “For the love of God, what’s wrong with you?”

  “What’s wrong with me?” Ian threw back. “What’s wrong with you? You’re the one married to the nut job!”

  “This is my house and I won’t stand for it!” Wyatt roared.

  “Then get your facts straight. This house isn’t yours. It’s hers.” He hooked a thumb at Ava. “And that’s why you allow yourself to be so pussy-whipped, whether you want to be or not!”

  “You’re done,” Wyatt said in a dangerous tone. Using the tongs meant to move wood around in the fireplace, he carefully fished out the key, scraping it through a thick bed of ash to the edge of the grate. The key recovered, Wyatt showed Ian a menacing look.

  “I
’m really sick of all this drama,” Ian responded with a snarl. “It gets us nowhere.” He took a swallow from his drink and, with an effort, pulled himself together. “Look, Ava, I’m sorry about Noah. I really am. And I understand why you won’t give up and want to find him. I do. But . . . the other stuff? The jumping into the bay, the shoes . . .” He pointed to the pair on the table, then hooked his thumb toward the fire. “Some stupid key . . . It’s nothing, okay? You keep telling all of us that you’re not hallucinating, that you’re not even the least bit neurotic, but really? Don’t you see? Shoes, keys, midnight plunges into freezing water, it’s not what a sane person would do.”

  Ian looked around for support, but no one else said a word. Thankfully.

  “We all feel it, Ava,” he went on, undeterred. “And I for one applaud you for not giving up on your boy, but your methods of trying to find him, of insisting someone’s deliberately trying to set you up, they’re not normal and it’s not right. No one thinks so, but they’re either afraid of losing their jobs or afraid you’ll throw them off the island, so they don’t speak up.”

  He crossed the room and placed a hand on her shoulder. “Let all this go.”

  With that, he left.

  Jacob said, “Ian’s right. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m sick of all this weeping and crying and accusations. All the damned hysteria!” Throwing up a hand, he turned to Ava. “Your son is gone. Period. You’d better learn to move on and deal with it!”

  Khloe gasped. “Jacob,” she protested.

  Ava felt as if she’d been sucker punched.

  “What? That shocks you? Seriously?” Jacob looked from one of his half siblings to the other. “We all feel this way.”

  Wyatt nearly leaped across the room. “You’re done here, too,” he said, looming over Jacob. “Get outta here. A woman is dead, for God’s sake!”

  “Hey!” Jacob held up both hands palms out. “Talk about overreacting. Don’t kill the messenger, okay? I’m just keepin’ it real!” He looked around the room and, when no one came to his defense, spat, “Figures.” Then he stomped out, his army boots thudding loudly. The cat, startled, shot through the doorway to the kitchen, nearly colliding with Demetria.