Читать книгу Overbite - Meg Cabot, Мэг Кэбот - Страница 12

Meena woke to the shrill vibration of her cell phone and glanced at the digital clock by the side of her bed. It was only six o’clock in the morning, two hours before she usually had to wake, because she lived so close to work. No one would call this early unless something was wrong.

Something, it turned out, was very wrong. She knew it the minute she picked up her phone and saw the New Jersey area code.

Meena didn’t know anyone who lived in New Jersey anymore. Not since her parents had retired to Florida.

Her pulse slowed almost to a standstill.

“Who the hell is that?” her brother demanded, stumbling shirtless from his room to stand in her doorway, blinking down at her sleepily. Jack Bauer had also scrambled from his basket in the corner and was now eagerly bouncing around beside her bed, thinking it was time to get up.

“Work,” she lied. “Can you take Jack out?”

“What the hell,” Jonathan said, but without rancor. “Come on, Jack,” he said to the dog, and went to go find his shoes and the dog’s leash.

Meena answered the phone.

“Hello,” said a woman’s voice, familiar, but older and more quavering than Meena had been expecting. “This is Olivia Delmonico. To whom am I speaking?”

Meena had thought she might eventually hear from the woman in David’s life.

But not this one.

“Um,” she said. She wasn’t ready. She—

“Hello?” Mrs. Delmonico said. “Is anyone there?”

“Yes,” Meena said. “Yes, Mrs. Delmonico. It’s me, Meena Harper.”

“Meena Harper?”

Mrs. Delmonico formed the words with obvious distaste. David’s parents had never liked Meena. Though neither they nor David had ever come right out and said so, Meena had always gotten the feeling they hadn’t approved of their son moving in with her after college, and not just because they didn’t believe in couples living together without the benefit of marriage, but because …

Well, they just hadn’t liked Meena. Maybe they’d felt like an aspiring writer wasn’t good enough for their ambitious son …

Or maybe it had had something to do with Meena mentioning, during her first dinner out with them, a celebration of David’s graduation from dental school, that Mr. Delmonico didn’t have to order any wine on her account, especially considering his “health concerns.”

Mr. Delmonico’s ongoing struggle with alcoholism had turned out to be a secret his parents had managed to keep from David his whole life. Up until that night, that is, when she’d blown it.

Oops.

“Well,” Mrs. Delmonico said. “This is … I don’t know what to say. I just found your number on a notepad by the side of David’s kitchen phone. I wasn’t aware the two of you were still … in touch.”

“Oh,” Meena said. She thought fast. “That. Well, you know I moved out of our old apartment recently, and I found I still had some boxes of his, so I got in touch with him about picking them up—”

“Oh yes,” Mrs. Delmonico said coldly. “Of course. Well, I apologize for calling so early. But I’m actually at David and Brianna’s right now. I’m going through every number I can find, trying to see if I can track down anyone who might have heard from David. He didn’t come home last night, you see.”

“He didn’t?” Meena tried to sound genuinely surprised. “That’s strange.”

“It’s very strange,” Mrs. Delmonico said. “Not like him at all.” Then, her voice dripping with ill-disguised dislike, she asked, “I don’t suppose you know where he is, do you, Meena?”

A picture of Mrs. Delmonico sitting in her pearls and Chanel suit in David and Brianna’s contemporary four-bedroom home—with its open kitchen and great room, three-car garage, and heated pool—flashed through Meena’s mind. Meena had never actually been to David’s home in Freewell, a fancy suburb about an hour’s drive from the city.

But somehow she could picture Mrs. Delmonico in it, all the same.

She could tell from the woman’s tone that she suspected that her son was right there in bed next to Meena, and that Meena was covering up for him.

Maybe in an alternate universe—one in which vampires, and therefore Lucien Antonescu, did not exist—this might have been true. Because then David would never have gotten bitten, and then Meena might actually have had the low self-esteem to have brought him home with her. Because she wouldn’t have known that something better existed out there.

But in this universe?

Never.

“No,” Meena said. “I do not know where David is.”

It wasn’t a lie. She didn’t know where David was. She hoped he was in heaven, but she wasn’t going to bet on it.

“Oh. Well, then.” Mrs. Delmonico’s voice sounded suddenly defeated. “I just don’t know what to do. I’ve called every number in his address book, and no one else has heard from him either. This number … well, it was my last hope. His cell phone goes straight to voice mail, just like Brianna’s. David Junior was up all night crying. He’s never spent a night before without his mother and his father, and he’s just hysterical—”

Meena sat bolt upright in bed. Her pulse, which had been racing before, now felt as if it had stopped.

“Wait,” she said. “Are you saying that you don’t know where David’s wife is either?”

“Yes,” Mrs. Delmonico said. She was sobbing openly now. The picture of her sitting in her pearls and Chanel suit vanished from Meena’s head. Now she heard only the voice of a frantic grandmother. “No one’s heard from her since she went to pick up some formula. And that was at six o’clock last night. I’ve called all the hospitals, but no one fitting David or Brianna’s description was brought in—”

Meena swung her legs from her bed. This wasn’t possible. Because she’d killed David. She’d killed him. There was no way Brianna could be gone, too. Meena had saved Brianna. Last night, she’d saved her.

“I just don’t know what to do,” Mrs. Delmonico was babbling, in a shaking voice. “Just now a New York City policeman called. David’s car has been found—its registration was still inside—near Little Italy. Why would David have been there? He never goes into the city. Maybe he and Brianna decided at the last minute to go to the Feast of San Gennaro? But why wouldn’t they have called?”

“Mrs. Delmonico,” Meena said, her throat very dry. “I want you to listen to me. This is very important. Are you in David’s house right now?”

“Of course,” Mrs. Delmonico said. “Someone has to stay with David Junior. My husband is here, too. He’s on the other line with the impound people, trying to figure out how we can get David’s car back—”

“Mrs. Delmonico,” Meena said. “Is there anywhere else you can take the baby? Just for a little while?”

“Well, I suppose we could take him to my daughter’s house.” Mrs. Delmonico sounded confused. “David’s sister lives a few miles away. But what does Naomi have to do with any of this? I already spoke to her and she hasn’t heard from David or Brianna—”

“I just think it would be best if you and your husband packed up some of the baby’s things and took him over to Naomi’s. Right away.”

“But when we spoke to that police officer from New York, he said the best thing to do was sit by the phone and wait for David to call. Or if we wanted to formally report that David and Brianna were missing, we could go over to the police station here in Freewell, which I thought was rude since I had him right on the phone, and you would have thought he could have taken the information. But he said we’ve got to do it in the jurisdiction in which they live.”

Meena took a deep, steadying breath. She realized now that just like Cassandra, she really was cursed.

Because Cassandra—poor, clairvoyant Cassandra, who’d denied the love of a god—had taken up with Agamemnon, only to end up murdered by his vengeful wife, Clytemnestra.

“Mrs. Delmonico,” she said, her mouth gone dry as sand, “have you reported them missing yet?”

“Well,” Mrs. Delmonico said, “no. The officer said we’d have to do it in person, and we can’t just leave the baby here by himself—”

“Exactly,” Meena said. “Drop the baby off at David’s sister’s, and then go to the Freewell Police Department as soon as you can. Do you hear me, Mrs. Delmonico? It’s very important that you report David and Brianna missing right away.”

Mrs. Delmonico sounded even more surprised. “Oh,” she said. “Well, the police officer didn’t say that. I don’t know how Naomi is going to feel about us leaving David Junior with her. She’s got the triplets now, you know. But I suppose under these circumstances, it would be all right. I just don’t know what we’re going to do about David’s car. Apparently, the impound people are being difficult. The police are searching it, or something—”

“Look,” Meena said, finally, in desperation. “Why don’t I just meet you? At the police station in Freewell. I might be able to help.”

Now Mrs. Delmonico sounded more than just surprised. She sounded stunned. “Help? How?”

“I might have some information,” Meena said. “About David. Information that the police may find useful. It’ll take me a little while to get there, because I’ll have to shower, then take the train. But I’ll be there no later than nine o’clock. You’ll meet me there, right? You and Mr. Delmonico? And you’ll leave the baby at David’s sister’s house?”

“Well,” Mrs. Delmonico said, clearly flabbergasted, “I … yes. Thank you, Meena. That’s very … kind.”

Meena said it was no problem and hung up, feeling guilty.

Because she wasn’t being kind. She had no other choice. She was the last person to have seen David Delmonico alive.

She was also the person who’d tried to save his wife’s life.

And apparently, she’d failed. She couldn’t understand how … except for the part where she’d made out with the guy who’d provided her with the weapon with which she’d murdered Brianna’s husband.

Now she had the lives of David’s parents, and his baby, to worry about. Who knew where Brianna Delmonico was?

But Meena wasn’t taking any chances that Brianna might be looking for breakfast in her own house. She had to make sure the Delmonicos got out of there, just in case.

She could see she had a lot of work to do if she was going to rectify all the wrongs she’d committed the night before.

But when she got to the station house where she’d promised to meet Mrs. Delmonico, she could see that her karmic punishment was going to be even worse than she’d anticipated.

That’s because the last person in the world she wanted to see was waiting for her on the station-house steps:

Alaric Wulf.