Читать книгу Vows of Silence - Debra Webb - Страница 11

Lacy waited at Mama Betty’s for the others to arrive. She’d selected a table far from the breakfast crowd. She sipped her coffee, scrolled through her PDA, anything to prevent looking as nervous as she felt. It had taken every ounce of courage she possessed not to call Cassidy last night. The call had come in after midnight, almost immediately after Rick had left. With Cassidy having spent the night at Melinda’s, calling her would have meant alerting Melinda to the situation. Melinda needed her rest more than any of them.

A hollow feeling dragged at Lacy’s stomach.

Rick was on to the fact that they were hiding something—so was someone else obviously. How could anyone know their secret?

It was impossible!

Forcing herself to smile when her attention accidentally landed on an arriving patron she didn’t quite recognize but who, apparently, remembered her, Lacy reminded herself to breathe and downed another swallow of her third cup of strong, black coffee. She’d had two at home before coming here. She was wired to the max.

The bell over the door jingled again and, thank God, this time it was Cassidy, with Melinda right behind her. Dread welled inside Lacy all over again. She hated so badly to even bring up Rick’s visit and the bizarre call, but what choice did she have? Her nerves jangled as involuntarily as the bell over the door when someone shoved it inward. What if the caller really did know what they’d done? And what if Rick persisted in his assertions?

How much time would it take before his instincts drove him to dig deeper, to push harder? To find something…maybe even a witness who had seen them leaving Charles’s house at dark on Christmas Eve ten years ago.

Lacy tried to swallow around the muscles contracting in her throat. More important, how much longer could she hold out? Pretending what they’d done was justified? If she failed all their lives would be destroyed and it would be her fault for not being strong enough.

Cassidy slid into a chair directly across from Lacy without a word, but her expression said it all. What’s happened now? And why the hell do you look so guilty?

“You didn’t sleep last night, did you?” Melinda asked, settling into the seat next to Cassidy and breaking the awkward tension.

Lacy resurrected the smile that kept dying too quickly each time she rammed it into place. “I slept okay. How about you?” Her friend looked as if she hadn’t eaten or slept for a week. The dark circles beneath her eyes gave them an even more sunken appearance. Her face looked as white as a sheet, the skin thin and fragile. This had to be tearing her apart inside—the not knowing, the wondering if someone would figure out the truth and take her kids away from her permanently.

Or if someone, like her best friend, would fall apart and ruin all their lives?

Melinda lifted then dropped her shoulders in confusion or maybe indecision, as if the answer to Lacy’s question took all her energy and left her slumped with defeat. “I drifted off once or twice.” She managed a faint smile. “But I’m okay,” she added softly.

“What’s going on, Lacy?” There was nothing soft or reassuring about Cassidy’s tone. She wanted to cut straight to the chase.

Though Melinda and Lacy had always been the closest of the four, Cassidy read each of them better than anyone else. Her ability to see through bullshit was almost uncanny. And she didn’t like beating around the bush.

Another jingle drew Lacy’s gaze back to the diner’s entrance. “Here comes Kira. Let’s wait for her.” She didn’t know why she put off the inevitable. But she’d take any excuse to gain another few seconds to steel for the reactions of the others.

Cassidy didn’t like to be kept waiting any more than Lacy liked being the cause of the irritation motivating her icy countenance just now, but there was no help for it. Kira, looking annoyed as she came inside, appeared to be attempting to end a cell-phone conversation. Finally she drew the cell phone from her ear, fiercely punched the end-call button and shoved the phone back into her bag.

“Looks like Brian made his hourly call,” Cassidy commented drily. “The guy torments her with his constant checkup calls.” Cass turned back to the table. “I don’t see how she puts up with him. He’s a stalker waiting to happen.”

“Are we having breakfast or has something happened?” Kira wanted to know as she took the only other vacant seat at the table for four. Any irritation with her boyfriend had been erased from her expression. “You sounded worried when you called,” she said to Lacy.

Cassidy looked pointedly at her. “Maybe now we’ll find out the reason.”

Guilt pinged Lacy but she’d be damned if she would let it show. As much as she loved Cassidy she was treading on Lacy’s last nerve and this whole thing had scarcely begun. They could be stuck in purgatory for weeks. Maybe the others were dealing with it better than her…except for Melinda, of course, but something had to give. She couldn’t take the pressure. It didn’t matter that she dealt with enormous stress every day on the job…this was different.

“I was afraid to talk about it on the phone,” she began quietly. Take it slow, she reminded herself. “If we’re suspects, they could be listening in on our phone calls.” Being seen together in public wasn’t a problem. They’d grown up here, people expected them to come together in support of each during a crisis.

Both Kira’s and Melinda’s eyes widened with renewed concern.

“Jesus, Lace,” Cassidy huffed with a roll of her eyes, “you’ve been watching too many crime dramas.” She looked from one worried woman to the next. “Tapping a phone line takes a court order. A court order takes justification and time.” She shook her head slowly side to side. “Our friendly chief of police hasn’t had either. No judge in his right mind is going to allow such an invasion of privacy without evidence. Besides, we just got here yesterday. We really don’t have to worry about anything of that nature just yet.”

Lacy felt her tension ease marginally. She’d been so damned worried and keyed up all night, she’d tossed and turned, barely managing a wink of sleep. The image of Rick Summers rushed into her thoughts and she pushed him away. He wasn’t the primary reason she hadn’t slept last night. It was the call.

“So what happened, Lacy?” Cassidy prompted. “What’s got you so uptight this morning?”

Lacy clasped her hands in her lap, thankful for the cover of the table so no one would see the nervous gesture. “Rick Summers came to see me last night.” This got the whole table’s undivided attention. She should get this part out of the way first. “He outright accused us of keeping something secret related to Charles’s murder.”

Melinda gasped and Cassidy draped her arm around her shoulders in a comforting gesture.

“Take it slow,” Cassidy said to Lacy, “and tell me exactly what he said.”

“Would you ladies like coffee?”

As if too afraid to make their own decisions, Melinda and Kira looked to Cassidy. “Black,” she said. “And one of those doughnuts.” Cassidy jerked her head toward the covered dish on the counter.

“Same here,” Kira said, following suit, her smile appearing almost genuine.

“Just coffee,” Melinda said, “with cream.”

The waitress left and Lacy gave Cassidy the details she remembered with far too much clarity. “Rick suggested that Charles had hurt Melinda, that he’d possibly hurt her many times. He didn’t come right out and say it, but I think he believes we’re involved in what happened to Charles.”

There was dead silence from the three women seated around Lacy as she went on. “He warned that he wouldn’t quit until he knew the truth. He is certain we’re hiding something. He tried to strong-arm me into coming clean, as he put it.” Lacy shook her head. “He even promised to protect us if we told him the truth.”

Lacy had expected the fear and the worry she saw on the faces of her friends, but what she hadn’t expected was the accusation she saw in Cassidy’s eyes.

“Why did he come to you?”

The question took Lacy aback. No one, not even Melinda, knew about the night she and Rick had shared…or the attraction she’d felt for him back in high school. That she still felt something made her furious, especially considering the current circumstances, but some part of her understood intrinsically that she could not share that snippet of her past with her friends. And that felt even more wrong. They’d always shared everything…even murder. But Rick was the enemy now.

Before she could stop herself, Lacy looked away. Perfect. How much guiltier could she act?

“I don’t know.” She forced herself to reconnect with Cassidy, whose suspicion seemed to mount. “Maybe because Mel and I were always so close. I guess he thought I would know her deepest, darkest secrets. Or maybe he thinks I killed Charles to save her. Whatever the reason,” she said bluntly, allowing her annoyance to show, “he intends to find out what we’re hiding. He made that point very clear.”

“First of all,” Cassidy explained, her expression relaxing, going from suspicious to knowing, “he has his first murder case and absolutely no evidence. Summers is like any other cop, he doesn’t want to look bad to those who keep him in office. He needs a suspect. Melinda is the logical choice since she’s the spouse. He’s going to follow that line of reasoning until he has something better to consider. Let’s face it, in cases like this, more often than not the spouse is the perpetrator.”

Cassidy made the whole thing sound so simple, so logical. But her deduction didn’t appear to make Melinda feel any better. She stared at the table, as if meeting the eyes of her friends was suddenly too difficult.

Before Lacy could say something to smooth over Cassidy’s insensitive remark about spouses and perpetrators, the waitress arrived with their coffee.

“Thank you, that’s all,” Cassidy said, dismissing the waitress before turning her attention back to the table. “We’re Melinda’s best friends, so, of course, we’re suspects as well.” She made a scoffing sound in her throat. “Well, the closest thing to suspects he’s got right now. You have to realize that he’s desperate to solve this as quickly as possible. All persons of interest are going to be under close scrutiny. He’ll apply pressure wherever he thinks he can.”

Cassidy continued in that vein, but Lacy’s attention was diverted by the man who entered the diner next—Brad Brewer, one of Rick’s deputies, judging by his uniform. He climbed onto a stool at the bar, placed his order, then promptly settled his full regard on their table. She looked away too quickly. She cursed herself for letting the whole world see how guilty she felt. Why hadn’t she smiled at him? She remembered him from high school. Football. Handsome, popular with the girls. But now he was a cop and that made him a potential enemy. It also made her as nervous as hell.

She hated this! She studied her half-empty cup and wrestled with the need to squirm in her seat. She might as well warn the others. “Brad Brewer just walked in. He’s wearing a deputy’s uniform and looking directly at us.” This whole thing was insane. How could they just keep pretending that all was as it should be?

Kira’s sharp intake of breath punctuated Lacy’s announcement, giving her something else to be confused about. Then again, maybe Kira was feeling just as uneasy as Lacy.

“Ignore him,” Cassidy ordered. “You have to stop letting these guys get to you. I’m telling you they’re on a fishing expedition and you’re giving them far too much bait. They don’t have anything on us. They won’t have anything unless one of us stupidly gives it to them.”

Cassidy was right. Lacy closed her eyes a second and fought to regain her composure. She had to get a grip here. The cops had nothing on them. They had nothing period. The only way anyone would know what happened was if they broke their silence.

“No one knows anything,” Cassidy added firmly, echoing Lacy’s thoughts. “All we have to do is keep it that way until this case is closed.”

As awful as all of this made her feel, it was the single tear that streaked down Melinda’s face that stabbed the deepest into Lacy’s heart. She wished she could take back the words. Her friend had been hanging on so rigidly to her composure until now. She shouldn’t have even told them about Rick’s visit.

“We’ll stick with the plan we’ve all agreed to,” Cassidy reiterated. “We all took the same vow. We’re not going to change our course now regardless of any one person’s personal demons.”

Lacy looked at Cassidy as another memory from ten years ago broadsided Lacy. Kira and Cassidy staring at her with suspicion in their eyes when she’d come back downstairs after checking to insure they hadn’t overlooked anything in the bedroom where they’d found Charles. They wanted to believe Lacy had killed him. She could feel it then, and she could feel it now.

“Was that comment directed at me?” She hadn’t consciously made the decision to ask the question, but there it was. She wasn’t going to let it go this time. She’d done so ten years ago…not this time.

“Lace, this isn’t about you,” Cassidy returned coolly. “This is about all of us. Keeping everyone in emotional turmoil isn’t going to help.”

“Why don’t we just put our cards out on the table this second,” Lacy challenged, any chance of staying calm gone now. She lowered her voice to a harsh whisper. “Let’s all tell where we were that day. No more dancing around the facts.” She leaned into the table, stared each one straight in the eye in turn, fury overriding her better judgment. “Let’s just get it over with once and for all. Clear the air. We all need to know what really happened.”

Melinda’s hand went to her chest and her ragged sigh was all that followed Lacy’s bitter words. The silence echoed deafeningly, obliterating the sounds around them, narrowing the scope of their world down to the suddenly too tiny table.

Regret for causing Melinda more discomfort crashed into Lacy, but even that stinging emotion wasn’t enough to fully quell her flash of anger. She was sick to death of the suspicions directed at her. She hadn’t killed Charles, even though she would have liked to on too many occasions to count.

Cassidy took Melinda’s hand and then reached across the table for Lacy’s. Kira immediately did the same, taking Lacy’s then Melinda’s to complete the circle. A circle they’d clung to as kids…to protect one another no matter the circumstances. Lacy closed her eyes and struggled for calm. She had to get a hold of herself. These were her friends. She had no right to lash out like that. The suspicions she felt were probably just her imagination, her own guilt coming back to haunt her.

“We’re all in this together,” Cassidy said with uncharacteristic softness. “It doesn’t matter who killed him. He’s dead and that’s the only thing that matters. We all wanted him dead, and we all participated in covering up what happened. We are all equally guilty. No one is more or less to blame. And each of us will do whatever it takes to protect one another. Shall we reiterate our vow?”

“I swear.” Kira was the first to speak up, her eyes glittering with fear.

Melinda nodded solemnly. “I swear.”

Lacy wanted to believe they were doing the right thing. She wanted desperately to trust Cassidy’s judgment, just like they always had, but part of her couldn’t pretend away the truth any longer. One of them had killed a man. All of them had covered up the murder, making sure the evidence would never be found. What they’d done was wrong….

But it was too late to back out now.

It was done, end of story.

“I swear,” she said with a reluctance she could no more hide than she could stop breathing.

Kira offered up a big, however shaky, smile and a subject change. “Melinda, I’ll be keeping you company today. Anything special you’d like to do.”

She sounded upbeat and as calm as the proverbial cucumber, but Lacy didn’t miss the little quiver in her voice or the way she kept glancing over at Deputy Brad Brewer. Cassidy had to have noticed it, too—she never missed anything—but she didn’t say a word. Instead she picked at her doughnut.

Enough. Lacy had to stop looking for conspiracies among her friends. She had to pull it together.

“Lacy, you’ll relieve Kira at about seven?” Cassidy inquired.

“Sure.” Yes, she definitely intended to do her part. She’d caused enough trouble this morning. It was time to suck it up and do what had to be done.

Melinda shook her head, the move so weary no one would have noticed had she not groaned at the same time. “Really, I feel like such a burden to you guys. I’ll be okay by myself. You don’t have to stay with me night and day.”

Cassidy turned to Melinda, her expression unexpectedly gentle for a woman so stern in nature. “Melinda, you’re not a burden to any of us. We want to protect you. You’re vulnerable right now. Let’s not keep going over and over the issue. We have to be careful. We don’t want you alone if the chief shows up at your door like he did Lacy’s.”

Melinda nodded, surrendering. “You’re right. I know.” She tried to smile, but the effort failed miserably. “I just don’t want to put anyone out.”

“We love you, Mel.” Lacy felt a genuine smile spread across her lips. This was the one good thing in all the insanity, a friendship that had endured through the years. She had to stop selfishly obsessing about her own feelings. “You couldn’t possibly put us out.”

Just as some of the tension lifted, Cassidy had to toss out another directive. “You steer clear of Summers,” she ordered Lacy. “I don’t know why he’s singled you out, but he’ll have his reasons. I don’t want you inadvertently giving him any additional fuel to fire his suspicions. He can’t possibly have anything more than a hunch.”

“I believe he used to have a crush on Lace,” Mel put in thoughtfully. “He stared at her all through art class, as I recall. It’s a miracle he ever finished a project. I remember thinking how sweet the whole thing was.”

Lacy refused to entertain the memories the comment stirred. She couldn’t look back. Getting caught up in what she and Rick had felt all those years ago would be a mistake. She had to stay away from him just like Cassidy said. And no one could know what had happened between them…not right now anyway. She already felt as if she’d been singled out as the one in this nightmare by those she trusted the most.

“Whether he had a crush on Lacy or not,” Cassidy allowed, “we don’t need him trying to use that against us. No one knows our secret. We have to keep it that way.”

The voice of last night’s caller slammed into Lacy’s brain. She had to tell them about the call! How could she have forgotten? Maybe because it was easier to forget than to analyze what the caller’s words no doubt meant. God, she hated to stir up more conflicting emotions.

“There’s something else,” she said quietly, dread welling all over again. Would the fact that she hadn’t already mentioned the call look suspicious to Cassidy? Stop it! she ordered.

The collective attention of those seated around the table settled heavily on her and Lacy would have gladly cut off her right arm not to have to bring this up. She’d caused enough hard feelings this morning. But she couldn’t pretend it hadn’t happened. Not when it could be the real thing…a true threat.

“After Rick left last night I received a phone call.”

Lacy moistened her lips, wished her throat didn’t feel all tight and parched. “The caller asked if I was Lacy Jane Oliver.” Lacy cleared her throat, could hardly breathe. “I said yes, thinking it could be a call about my parents. I was…worried they might have been in some sort of accident.”

“But the call wasn’t about your parents?” Cassidy guessed, her guard going up once more to conceal whatever her true feelings might be. Even her tone gave away nothing. But Lacy could feel the doubt expanding between them like a bottomless void. She was suspect of Lacy’s story even before she heard it.

Refusing to be dragged back into that whole paranoid frame of mind again, she forged ahead. “No. He or she—” she shook her head “—it was hard to tell if it was a man or a woman. The voice was so low and distant, almost distorted, like a bad cell-phone connection. Anyway, whoever it was said I should be very, very afraid. For a split second I thought maybe it was a prank but then he said I know your secret.”

Another long beat of nerve-racking silence passed before any of them found their voices again.

“But that’s…” Kira looked at each of them in turn. “That’s impossible. No one knows.”

“Could someone have seen you guys…?” Melinda moistened her trembling lips. “You know…”

“No one saw us,” Cassidy said flatly. “If someone had seen or had known anything we’d all be behind bars serving out our sentences.” She leveled her most intimidating stare on Lacy. “This is a hoax. You say the call came in right after Summers left?”

Lacy nodded. “Almost immediately.”

“Damn him,” Cassidy swore. “He’s trying to scare you. He can’t get away with that.”

“What do I do?” Lacy argued. “Tell him that his creepy calls about my secret are not going to work?”

“You don’t tell him anything,” Cassidy cautioned. “That’s exactly what he wants you to do. Ignore it.”

“But what if it’s not him?” Melinda leaned in close. “From what I’ve seen so far, Rick is a good chief of police. I can’t imagine he would stoop to this kind of underhanded tactic. Someone had to have seen what you did.”

Cassidy glanced around the diner as if worried that they were being watched. Deputy Brewer seemed to be focused on his breakfast. “Melinda,” she said, turning her attention back to the woman at her side, “you’re overreacting. No one saw us. If they had, they would have talked years ago. Don’t forget that Senator Ashland offered a sizable reward for any information on his missing son.”

Lacy had forgotten about that. Rumor had it that Charles, Senior, had even hired a private investigator in hopes of locating his son, but the man had found nothing. She wasn’t sure whether the four of them had simply been smart or extremely lucky.

Either way, Cassidy was correct. If someone had seen anything, they would certainly have cashed in on the reward ten years ago. But would Rick really go to such extremes to scare her?