Clandestine Cover-Up. Pamela Tracy

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СКАЧАТЬ and froze as she heard movement downstairs. Vince tensed, too. Critters weren’t that loud, and people generally knocked when they entered.

      Unless, of course, they were the kind of people who would paint a warning sign on a front door or leave a dead mouse.

      “Wait here,” he ordered.

      Instead she followed him. Because he’d rather have her within reach, he didn’t protest.

      Slowly, they went through the building, listening for more noises, slowing when they heard one. As he led her out the front door, he tried not to remember the mouse or wonder who put it there and why.

      He closed the front door and stopped, somewhat shielding her from seeing the words written on a piece of paper tacked to the door.

      “What are you doing?” she asked, moving closer to see.

      YOU BUY YOU DIE.

      This time it looked like the sign maker had been in a hurry. The warning was in pencil and whoever had made the sign had been more than angry. In five or six spots, the point of the pencil had gone right through the paper. Not only that, but the words were in bold, dark letters.

      “Another warning,” Tamara muttered.

      “No,” Vince said. “This time, it’s a promise.”

      TWO

      Friday night, according to the police dispatcher, was not the best night for nonemergency responses. If Tamara wanted, she could wait a couple of hours for a squad car to show up. Or she could come down to the station and wait for an hour. Or she could wait until tomorrow.

      Vince wanted to yank the phone out of her hand and fill the dispatcher in on Tamara’s history with a stalker, especially since it didn’t seem that she had any intention of doing so.

      “I’ll arrange to meet with an officer tomorrow,” Tamara said.

      As Tamara deposited her cell phone back into her purse, Vince asked, “So, you don’t think it’s important enough to tell them about the stalker?”

      For a moment, he thought she’d clam up or tell him it was none of his business.

      “There are three possibilities,” she finally said. “One, these warnings weren’t meant for me. That’s my hope. Of course, more realistically, I may need to accept that my past has followed me and William Massey has an accomplice. Or, finally and even worse, I have something new to worry about.”

      That was what he’d been thinking. He didn’t know whether to be relieved that she wasn’t in denial about the threats or to be worried that she wasn’t a screaming lunatic about the threats. He started to make a suggestion, but suddenly she was looking at him with the strangest expression.

      “You know, it may not be a stalker. I mean Massey’s notes were always of the ‘I’m going to get you’ variety. They always had an undertone that I belonged to him. Both the graffiti on the door and now this note seem to just want me to disappear.”

      He wanted to say that every stalker was different, but what did he know? “You want me to follow you to your sister’s house?”

      She raised an eyebrow. “Why would you follow me there?”

      “It’s where you’re staying, right?”

      “No, Lisa’s nine months’ pregnant. She’s only been married a year and is busy building a home for a new husband and stepdaughter. There’s a big difference between me coming for a short visit and me moving in. Trust me, she doesn’t need another roommate.”

      “Okay, so where are you staying?” Vince asked.

      “Billy’s letting me rent his mother’s upstairs apartment. It’s the same one Lisa lived in before she married Alex. I just moved in this morning.”

      “Maybe you should call Alex? He’d come over.”

      Tamara shook her head. “Lisa doesn’t need to be alone, and this is not their problem.”

      It wasn’t his problem either, but as he followed her off the steps of the porch and then to her car, he couldn’t shake the feeling that somehow her problem was about to become his problem.

      “I’ll follow you home,” he said, opening her car door.

      “I’d appreciate that.”

      It was well after ten when he finally parked his car behind Tamara’s, and the nighttime sky offered little in the way of light. The streetlights, however, beamed a halfhearted welcome. Lydia’s was the biggest house on the street. It also had the most character. It had, at one time, been his home away from home. A place he could go if things got a little difficult at home.

      Stepping out of his truck, he walked leisurely over to Tamara’s little red Jaguar. The sound of country music carried on the wind. She turned the car off before gathering up some papers and her purse plus a couple of shopping bags. He took the bags from her, half expecting her to protest, but maybe both the warnings and the mouse had subdued her.

      He followed her to the bottom of an outdoor staircase. When Lydia had moved into the brick house, she had converted the upstairs to an apartment complete with its own entrance. Vince’s mother said Lydia not only knew how to manage her money but how to create ways to make money.

      Vince’s mother was too busy trying to manage her sons to manage her money. When Vince was ten, his father had abandoned the family. That same year Vince’s older brothers had moved out. For the next two years, Vince and his mother had moved from one apartment to another. They hadn’t had much money. During that time, his mother had remarried, had Vince’s little brother Jimmy, and got divorced. Vince became the man of the family.

      When they got to the top of the stairs, Tamara unlocked the door, disappeared inside for a moment and then returned to relieve him of the bags.

      “Thanks,” she murmured softly. “I was getting a little spooked back there at the church. You made some pretty bad moments not so horrible. I do appreciate your help.” Then she smiled and closed the door.

      Leaving him outside, feeling as if he’d just missed an opportunity he hadn’t even realized was offered. That realization was followed by the certainty that his initial attraction to her flowing red hair was really nothing.

      Nope, it was her smile that did him in.

      

      For the first time in months, Tamara fell into bed without going through a paranoid routine of checking her front door’s lock and all the windows about a dozen times.

      Tonight when she crawled into bed, her last thought was I’m tired. She didn’t make it to I wish I could fall asleep. Instead, she fell asleep.

      For two whole minutes.

      And then, her eyes went to the clock by her bedside.

      Midnight.

      It had all started at midnight. William Massey’s first phone call. Tamara burrowed under the blankets and, even though her clock didn’t make any noise, she covered СКАЧАТЬ