Chapter 9
CHAPTER NINE
To Do:
- Emergency preparedness for LA
- Auction items for gala
- Pretend like hearing isn’t happening
“ What is that smell?” Luke’s mother’s voice cut like a knife.
Rain pattered against the windshield as Claire glanced in the rearview mirror. Rachel was never one to mince words. There was a 200 percent chance she was complaining about Alice’s perfume.
“Air freshener?” Luke grunted from the driver’s seat. His knuckles were white on the steering wheel. Claire laid a hand on his thigh and squeezed.
The four of them had only been in the same car for twenty minutes since picking her mother up at the airport, and already Rachel and Alice had chided each other nearly to the point of Luke threatening to turn the car around. With the exception of a mercifully uneventful Thanksgiving, the last time Rachel and Alice had been in the same room was Barney’s preliminary hearing, where Alice had been literally dragged out of the courtroom by the bailiff after verbally harassing Rachel.
Alice dug in her purse. “Is this the smell you’re talking about?” She clutched a ziplock bag in one manicured hand and waved it under Rachel’s nose. The car hit one of West Haven’s infamous potholes, and Alice nearly shoved the bundle up Rachel’s nostril.
Rachel recoiled as though the bag was full to the brim with Rosie’s poo. She clutched a tissue to her face. “Yes, that’s the smell. What is it?”
“Oh, it’s just a cypress and lavender bundle.”
Oh, boy. Shit, meet fan.
“What on earth do you use that for?” Rachel sounded as scandalized as if Alice had admitted to hoarding human cremains.
“This and that. Cleansing, evoking wisdom and calm.”
Rachel scoffed. “Cleansing what?”
“Negative energy, of course. I didn’t want to be rude, Rachel, but I believe you could really benefit from using some. Why don’t you give this spray a try? It should help you let go of all that anger you’re holding on to.”
Alice held out a small spray bottle. Rachel didn’t take it.
“I’m not holding onto any anger. Except perhaps at being in this car,” she muttered, turning to glance out the window. She began tapping at her phone, as though she was going to call a Lyft in the middle of the highway.
Claire bit her lip. Things were getting a bit dicey. She didn’t need the extra stress minutes before confronting the man who tried to kill her. Should she intervene? On the other hand, Rachel had represented Barney and publicly slandered her. Maybe she deserved to sweat in a car under Alice’s watchful eye for a minute.
Claire dug through her purse for her phone. For once, no texts from Brad. She tucked it away, and her hand brushed against her victim impact statement in its sheet protector. Her chest tightened.
In the rearview mirror, Alice’s face screwed up in concentration. Oh boy. That face either meant that she was trying to remember an obscure recipe for a tincture, or a member of the dead had come for a chat.
Alice set her baby blue eyes on Rachel. “He forgives you, you know. For the man from the convention. What was his name?” She raised her chin and paused, seemingly listening hard. “Skip.”
Luke slammed on the brakes. They all lurched forward. “Sorry,” he said after a moment. He lifted his foot from the pedal, and the car continued traveling west toward the courthouse. His eyes darted to the rearview mirror.
Skip? Who the hell was Skip? Claire glanced in the back seat. Rachel was as white as a ghost.
“Who told you that?” The pathologically cool and collected Rachel had a slight quaver in her voice. Alice tended to have that effect on people.
Alice placed the spray bottle on her lap. “He did. George. Lovely man.”
Claire gripped Luke’s thigh. George was Luke’s deceased dad’s name as well as his brother’s.
“That’s impossible,” Rachel uttered.
“Nothing’s impossible, Rachel. Like I said, he wants you to know that he forgives you.” Alice paused and squinted again. She laughed, a strange sound in the tense atmosphere. “And the necklace you’ve been looking for is in a box marked ‘George’s Junk’ in your basement. Next to the rocking horse you call Elvis.”
Luke pulled to a stop at a red light. He and Claire exchanged a look. The courthouse was a couple of blocks ahead. The world’s most awkward car ride was nearly at an end.
Rachel released her seat belt. “I believe I’ll walk the rest of the way.” She popped open the door and shimmied between their car and the one behind them. Stepping onto the sidewalk, she marched toward the courthouse as if she was going to battle.
“Ah, at least she took the spray,” Alice said with a smile. “Poor dear.”
Claire made a mental note to grill Luke about the Skip situation as soon as the hearing was over. Did Rachel have an affair? Was that why Luke’s parents had divorced? She had never thought to ask, and Luke wasn’t exactly forthcoming with his family drama.
The disastrous car ride was so distracting that she had nearly forgotten why they were traveling in the first place. The courthouse rose out of the fog. Evil waited inside, and she was going to have to face it head-on today. Even at this distance, the press was clearly visible crawling over the courthouse steps.
As soon as they turned into the parking lot, her stomach churned. A crowd of reporters crushed around them, their interest in Claire seemingly reinvigorated by the sentencing hearing. Her hand was halfway to her nose, primed for alternate nostril breathing, when she stopped and clenched it into a fist. Although the windows were tinted, they were definitely not dark enough to prevent the press from seeing her doing weird yoga stuff.
When Luke opened the driver’s side door, the noise was deafening. Alice reached forward from the back seat and gripped Claire’s shoulder. She seemed to be muttering a prayer under her breath. Luke opened Alice’s door, then Claire’s.
He and her mother flanked Claire like a pair of soldiers. She ducked her head as the paparazzi swarmed, shouting questions from every direction. Raindrops plopped heavily onto her head and shoulders. She reached into her bag and pulled out her travel umbrella. There was barely enough room in front of her to open it. Where was Sawyer, her personal security detail, when she needed him?
“Out of the way. FBI.”
The crowd parted down the middle. Jack Hartley’s salt-and-pepper hair was molded perfectly into place as he marched over to the car.
“Tanya’s inside already, but she wants to see you before the hearing. Ready?” he asked. Claire nodded and accepted the arm he held out. Luke took her other one, and the three of them surged through the crowd toward the courthouse. Claire glanced over her shoulder to be sure her mother hadn’t been swallowed up by the press. Alice trailed behind, strategically banging her elbows into the more aggressive camera wielders.
A couple of feet in, the path widened dramatically in front of them.
“Move,” a commanding female voice called. One of the reporters in front of Claire sidestepped and revealed one of her former couples—Tyler, a disabled army veteran, and his new fiancée, Ericka. They both held riot shields. Tyler’s prosthetic legs clicked as he walked toward Claire.
“Claire,” Tyler said, smiling at her before taking a position in front of her.
“Tyler! What are you?—”
“Back off, you big lutz,” a New Jersey accent interrupted from somewhere nearby.
“Ouch,” a reporter called, and a very tan couple appeared in front of Tyler and Ericka.
Steve, another former client who had proposed to his girlfriend via Jet Ski the previous spring, held a boogie board in front of him, and his fiancée, Cassie, clutched an oversized tote bag like a battering ram.
“Hey, Claire,” he said as calmly as though they had run into each other outside a local café.
She gaped at them. “What are you guys doing here? Aren’t you getting married like?—”
“This weekend.” Cassie nodded and turned to the crowd in front of her. Raindrops came down on both of them, but neither moved to pull out an umbrella. Claire made a mental note to send their congratulations card out when she got home. “We weren’t about to let the media make mincemeat out of you. Not after everything you did for us. I said get outta here ,” she demanded, shoving her purse directly into a camera. “Oh, and put this on.” She pulled a scarf out of her purse and tossed it to Claire.
“What is it?” The fabric was shiny.
“Jane made it for you. It’s high contrast apparel, so if the paparazzi use a flash, it’ll blur your face. She and Aaron wanted to be here, but Jane had an exhibition in New York.”
Jane was a talented painter. Her proposal video had gone viral, and Aaron wrote to Claire several months later to tell her that Jane was getting offers from galleries all over the country.
“I didn’t realize you all knew each other.” Claire tilted her head and ducked under a boom microphone.
“We didn’t,” Aaron said. “We connected online after you were abducted. We wanted to do something nice for you, but we couldn’t agree on anything. That’s why we’re here.”
Claire smiled and obediently wound the scarf around her neck. Between her FBI father, scowling boyfriend, and the four people wielding various objects in front of her, their path to the courthouse immediately became more manageable.
Déjà vu hit her like a Mack truck as she reached the building’s exterior stairs. Everything felt exactly the same as it had on the day of the preliminary hearing. Climb the flight of steps to the front doors, pray that the metal detector inside didn’t erase any of her proposal notes, hope her mother didn’t try to bring any voodoo dolls or other questionable objects inside. As long as she thought of each step as an item on a To Do list, she could survive.
This time, instead of being sequestered, Claire was allowed to enter the courtroom. Her former couples broke off from the crowd with handshakes and hugs. They filed into one of the rows. Tanya pounced on her immediately and was, thankfully, wearing clothes today. Her tie-dyed romper and Birkenstocks were not conventional court attire, but for some reason, the sight of her zany stepmother was like a salve.
“Claire, you are an amazing, strong, beautiful goddess. Everything will be fine. How was your leftover spaghetti?” She clutched her hand like the outcome of her entire day depended on Claire’s assessment.
Alice wrinkled her nose. Apparently Tanya’s new role in Claire’s life was getting under her skin.
“Uh, it was great,” Claire said. “Luke enjoyed it too. Didn’t you?” It wasn’t really the time to talk about pasta, but maybe she was just offering a distraction.
“Hmm?” he asked. He had been scanning the front of the courtroom. “Right. Yeah. I didn’t even know you could make meat sauce without the meat. It was very convincing. We’d better go take our seats.”
Alice managed a handshake with Tanya before whisking Claire away to a different row.
Kyle’s growing bald spot was visible behind the counselor’s desk. Mindy was already sitting in a row, tapping away at her tablet. Her raven-colored hair was gathered into a low bun. Sawyer’s hulking shape sat next to her. Rachel was in the row behind them, as rigid as a two-by-four.
And there, in the front row, was Barney’s mother. She was alone, head bowed. A woman defeated. No matter how this day ended for Claire, it would be worse for her. Her only son, a murderer. A chill ran down Claire’s spine.
“Where’s Coli?” she asked as Alice rushed to embrace Mindy. Focusing on Barney’s mother wouldn’t do her mental health any good.
“Bathroom,” Mindy grunted through one of Alice’s legendary bone-crushing hugs.
Claire sat on the worn wooden bench and pulled her purse onto her lap. She removed a binder, her victim impact statement, a roll of poo bags, a pen case, and a scrap of her wedding dress that she had brought for inspiration before finding a sleeve of saltine crackers. She bent forward and gestured at Kyle before tossing the crackers to him.
“Thank you for coming,” she said to Mindy with a quicker and gentler hug than her mother had offered.
“Like I would miss the chance to stare daggers at that douchebag. It’s great, by the way. You don’t have to worry.” Claire had forwarded her the victim impact statement when she had finally finished it at midnight.
“You get everything out that you wanted to say?” Sawyer asked as she hugged him next.
Claire paused. “I think so. We’ll see if it makes a difference.”
If her statement didn’t make a difference, and the judge went with the minimum sentence, she was going to give up on America entirely and move to Canada. There was no way the Canadian justice system would let a dangerous idiot like Barney Windsor out after a paltry five years. She could totally make a living planning proposals in Canada. She just needed to learn more about hockey and publicly funded health systems first.
Nicole came back a few minutes later, paler than usual with dark circles under her eyes. She hugged Claire and collapsed onto the bench between Kyle and Luke. She took the crackers eagerly and shoved several in her mouth.
Alice stood and let out a little squeal, then nearly fell over Luke’s knee as she rushed toward Nicole.
“Claire didn’t tell me you were pregnant,” Alice exclaimed, reaching her hands forward but snatching them back. At least she had the good manners not to rub the pregnant lady’s belly.
“How did you know?” Nicole asked over a mouthful of crackers, placing a hand protectively over her stomach.
Alice immediately launched into a discussion about intuition and changes in Nicole’s aura. Mindy scooted closer to Claire and offered her a thermos. The last time she had accepted a thermos from Mindy, it had been full of vodka. Claire shook her head. She needed a clear head for what was coming next.
Finally, after what felt like an eternity, most of the courtroom was seated. Silence gradually fell, and Claire’s heart tripped in her chest. The yellowed walls seemed to be closing in on her. The clock at the front of the room ticked maddeningly. He was here. In the building. The man who had stalked her for months, chloroformed her in a hallway, dressed her in her wedding dress, and stabbed her.
The courtroom doors opened behind them. Was that the clack of chains? Luke and Alice simultaneously grabbed Claire’s hands. She kept her eyes forward as the shuffling sound of footsteps approached. The courtroom was silent except for those shuffling steps.
Shuffle. Shuffle. Had prison seriously impacted Barney’s ability to walk like a normal human being? Would it kill him to show some hustle? She could have been using this time to do another check of Pacific Park’s policy on outside vehicles. Finally, the world’s slowest felon hit her peripheral vision. His gaze bore into her like a drill, but she refused to look at him. He wasn’t worth a single glance. The swinging doors opened, and she caught a flash of an orange jumpsuit before dropping her gaze to her lap. She dug the scrap of wedding dress back out of her purse and clutched it in her left hand.
Moments later, a door at the front of the room opened and the judge entered. It was time. Would justice be served, or had Barney managed to pay someone off despite his frozen assets?
The beginning of the hearing passed in a blur. People spoke at the witness stand, but it all sounded far away. After several statements from a parole officer, Kyle, and Barney’s lawyer, the judge shuffled some papers on her desk.
“And now we’ll be hearing a victim impact statement from Miss Hartley.”
Claire stood on quaking knees. Public speaking didn’t normally intimidate her, but this was something else entirely. She really should have peed again before coming into the room.
Her heartbeat thudded incessantly in her ears. It was so loud, surely the entire court could hear it. Her whole body was pulsating, telling her to flee. Even if her eyes were closed, she was certain she could have pinpointed Barney like a heat-seeking missile. Evil flowed out of him, billowed across the gallery like fog.
The scrap of wedding dress clutched in her fist grew damp as she entered the swinging doors and climbed the steps to the witness stand. The sheet protector with her statement crinkled in her hand.
She was going to be sick. She was going to throw up on the counselors. It would be in the news— Hartley Hurls at Hearing .
As she faced the court, she stared immediately into the steely, evil eyes of Barney Windsor. A shiver ran up and down her spine, but she barely gave him a passing glance before moving her gaze to her family and friends. Luke’s arm was around Alice. Rachel looked more pinched and constipated than usual. Nicole was like a frightened baby deer with chipmunk cheeks full of crackers. Mindy crossed her eyes, put her fingers at the corner of her mouth, and stuck her tongue out. It was almost enough to make her smile.
Claire bent the microphone toward her, and a deafening shuffling sound emanated from the speakers. A couple of people in the gallery flinched. Nothing like making a good first impression.
“Your Honor, thank you for allowing me to present my impact statement today.”
She turned to look at the judge, who nodded encouragingly at her. Everything rested on this moment. No pressure.
“How do you put into words the impact a violent crime has had on your life?” she wondered aloud. Her attention moved back to the crowd.
Alice smiled encouragingly while big, fat tears streamed down her cheeks.
Claire wrung her hands and picked up her paper. It shook in her hands. “Honestly, that night changed everything for me. My sense of security, my trust in my community and my judgment, my business, my emotional and physical health.”
She took a deep breath and glanced up from her paper. Luke nodded.
“I had anxiety attacks. I had to take self-defense lessons to feel even a tiny bit of security. And still, I don’t feel safe. I can’t walk down the street without studying everyone in my path, cataloging all the men and what they’re wearing. This scar”—she paused, patting the shiny mark on her chest where Barney had stabbed her—“it’s a daily reminder of the worst night of my life.”
She looked at the judge, but her face was unreadable. Claire’s hands trembled, and for a moment she lost her place. A bead from the fabric of her wedding dress bit into her palm. She glanced at it. The day she wore this dress was supposed to be the happiest day of her life. Instead it had been a blood- drenched nightmare. Although, technically speaking, marrying her ex would have been almost as bad as getting stabbed by a serial killer in the long run. Maybe he had done her a favor when he cheated on her with her nemesis.
Shit, which bullet point was she on? She glanced up, and Mindy mimed someone taking a picture. Right, the press.
“He made me a spectacle. The press hounded me for months after the attack. I had to climb down the fire escape with my dog just to let her pee in peace. And my business suffered too. We built Happily Ever Afters to work exclusively with couples we genuinely believed were in love and wanted to get married for no ulterior motives. We had a one hundred percent success rate before Barney. My reputation in the business community was irrevocably damaged. I’m now the girl who planned a proposal for a serial killer. Who could trust such a special moment in their lives to someone who didn’t see evil staring her in the face?”
She gestured at Barney. A smile curled his crooked mouth. “We’ve now incurred significant financial costs by requiring a federal background check for every applicant, but it still doesn’t feel like enough. Evil doesn’t always have a criminal background. Barney Windsor didn’t.”
A jolt hit her. Was her car door locked? She hadn’t done her customary memory dance after shutting the door. But then again, she wasn’t about to break out into the foxtrot with thirty reporters breathing down her neck. Surely Luke had locked it. She needed to focus. Another deep breath ballooned in her chest.
In her peripheral vision, Barney twitched in his orange jumpsuit, but she wasn’t going to give him the pleasure of eye contact. Right, she should probably keep talking.
She took a deep breath and continued. “Even after being drugged, thrown in a trunk, dressed in my wedding dress, tortured, and stabbed, I didn’t think I needed therapy. I thought I could handle it myself. Then the sleepwalking started. I would wake up with no memory of how I got where I was. I walked into a lake, woke up in the middle of a forest. One time I even drove my car. It made me a danger to myself and others. I started therapy a few months ago, and while it’s been helpful, it doesn’t stop the nightmares. It hasn’t restored my sense of security or my belief that people are basically good.”
Alice sniffed loudly from her row. At least she had listened to Claire and left the voodoo dolls at home this time.
Okay, the end of her speech was approaching. She could do this. Just a few more minutes of baring her soul to the world, and then she could hide at home with a plate of enchiladas and a glass of sangria. Or maybe she would just run away. What was it Dr. Goulding had said? Her homework was to do something very un-Claire. Shirking her responsibilities and running away was about as un-Claire as could be.
“I carry the weight of what Barney did to me every single day. Even now, I’m trying to rescue an animal shelter he funded and abandoned. Twelve dogs—well, eleven, since I adopted a blind pug named Winston—and seven cats are destined for the euthanasia list in a catch-all shelter because of him.”
There was a gasp from the court. Maybe she should have put out an empty guitar case for donations.
“Despite his best efforts, Barney didn’t succeed in killing me. And because I’m standing here today instead of buried six feet underground, his expected sentence is dangerously, almost laughably light. Your Honor, this is a dangerous man.”
She pointed at the putz in the jumpsuit before turning her attention back to the judge. “I implore you to impose the maximum sentence allowed for his charges. He’s not capable of reform. The minute he gets out, he’ll go straight back to stalking and killing. He’s dangerous, and he’s not alone.”
Oops. Her dad was not going to be pleased that she just hinted at ESA. Oh well.
“Please do what you can to protect this community, Your Honor. Don’t let the Widowmaker off easy. Thank you.”
She stood and the chair made a farting noise as she scooted it backward. Please god don’t let the entire court think she had too many beans at dinner last night. She hurriedly shuffled off the stand and through the swinging doors. Her eyes stayed locked on the clock in the back of the room as she passed by the man who had tried to kill her, but even without eye contact her skin crawled. How had she ever missed this stench of evil during their dress rehearsals? She tripped over Kyle’s shoe and collapsed breathlessly back into her row.
Alice immediately threw her arms around her and rocked her like she was a child who had a bad dream. Luke squeezed her hand so hard it almost hurt. He kissed her on the cheek when Alice released her.
The judge banged her gavel, and Claire jumped. “The court will recess for fifteen minutes, after which time I will sentence the defendant.”
Most of the crowd got to their feet. Claire stood, too jittery to be this close to Barney. Before anyone could follow, she stalked up the aisle, out the doors, and marched down the marbled hallway to the seating area where she had spent the first hearing. She pressed herself against the wall and took deep breaths. Her legs were Jell-O. The wall was the only thing keeping her upright.
A squirrel dangled from a bird feeder in the dreary courtyard. His mouth was full of seed. What she would give to be that squirrel. No one would ever make him relive his worst day in front of a hundred people.
There were footsteps in the hallway.
“Hey,” a low, growly voice said. Luke appeared at her shoulder. “You did great.”
“Thanks,” Claire said flatly and closed her eyes on a sigh. “It was only the most humiliating thing I’ve ever done. And that includes the time I streaked in front of my entire apartment complex. And the time I flashed my blood-drenched boobs at every first responder in the tri-county area. And the time I flashed your mom. Let’s just include all nudity-related humiliations.”
Luke’s hand snaked around her shoulders. She opened her eyes. His rough thumb rubbed the side of her neck. She ducked her head and nestled into his shoulder, breathing in his familiar woodsy scent.
“Clairebear?” Alice’s musical voice drifted down the hallway. Claire groaned.
“There she is. My darling, you were enchanting.” Alice gripped her by the shoulders and stared into her eyes before pulling her into a suffocating hug. Then she moved back and cupped her chin in her hand. “So much pain. So much grace.”
Nicole and Mindy appeared out of nowhere and surrounded her in a best friend hug. “I have tequila,” Mindy whispered in Claire’s ear. Aha. So the mystery thermos had been booze. Thank god she hadn’t stumbled up to the witness stand smelling like Mardi Gras.
Claire shuddered. “Maybe after the sentencing. Come on.”
She squared her shoulders and pulled away from the wall. Flanked by her friends and family, she had all the support she needed.