Chapter 33
THIRTY-THREE
Rikki
I believe it, but I don’t. Sitting between Lucas and Roberta Matlock on her Día de Los Muertes bench is easy, especially with the floppy hollyhocks drunkenly climbing the pole beside it. We look at a yearbook, but I can only think about Lucas and what he told me.
Is Julie Larimore really dead? I won’t believe it until it’s confirmed through DNA.
I’m a journalist. What’s my instinct?
Tears burn my eyes. Damn, it’s just too close. I don’t want to know.
“Told you she’d have to be a beauty.” Roberta scoots closer to me on the bench and points at a photo in an old, yet still shiny yearbook.
“Took me hours to find this, but I knew I would. Got the newspaper stories, too. She tried to kill her father. Talk was he was abusing the girls, but she never said. Both girls got placed in a foster home, anyway.”
“What happened to the father?” Lucas asked.
“I don’t know if he’s even alive. He’d been in Vietnam.
His wife took off and left him with the girls, and his mother helped raise them until she died.
He fought to get them back, but I can’t remember how it all worked out.
” She taps the photo with her finger. “I remember her, though. A perfect student.”
“Damn.” Lucas must see what I do.
There’s no mistaking her identity, even with the darker hair, minus the streaks. I read the name under the photo. “Julie Homer.” As I speak, an image flashes into my mind: blond, perky, efficient to the point of irritating.
I clutch the yearbook. “Lucas, what’s your assistant’s last name? Ellen?”
I see the answer in his startled eyes. “Homer.”
“Ellie Homer. That was the little sister,” Roberta Mat-lock says.
But we already know that.
Lucas is on his feet. “Ellen’s gone. I haven’t been able to reach her since she contacted the women this morning.”
“What women?” I ask.
“Tania Marie, Princess Gabby and Rochelle McArthur.”
Holding the yearbook, inhaling its musty scent, I feel ill. “Why did she contact them, Lucas?”
His eyes look sick, too, and worried. “To set up a meeting with Bobby W.”
“When?”
“Right about now, I think.”
Gabriella
The man with the rifle moved so fast that it took her a moment to realize that he was reaching for the door next to her, where she huddled on the other side of Tania Marie.
“My God,” Rochelle said as the door flew open.
Hard fingers clamped Gabriella’s left arm, yanking her into the dusky air. She tried to struggle, and he slapped her across the face, searing her with a bright flash of pain.
She gasped, struggling to stay conscious, knowing he would kill her if she collapsed. This man in the horrible camouflage clothes and the eyes of stone was a killer.
A bolt of energy hit them full force.
“Let her go.”
Out of the car now, Christopher broke the man’s grasp and set him off balance. Gabriella scrambled away from the car. The man came back at Christopher full force.
“Run,” Christopher shouted, but the pickup blocked their exit.
She ran, nevertheless, flew to the other side of the car, where Rochelle and Tania Marie huddled. Christopher wrenched the man away from him. But without even looking, the attacker darted out his hand for the rifle.
“No.” Gabriella heard a scream she knew must be her own. But she saw only the rifle, its dark angry shape swinging into position. The exploding shot was the loudest noise she’d ever heard in her life.
Christopher flew back, his body exploding before her eyes, in blood and dust.
Sobbing, stunned, knowing that her life was over, that she was dead, Gabriella stumbled after the others into the building.
Rikki
“Ellen’s gone,” Lucas says. “No one knows where she went. That’s not like her. And Bobby W says the women didn’t show up to meet him at the boat.”
I barely hear him. The briefcase lies open on the seat of the car, and I hold the bills in my hands. The answers are here, I know. The doctor bills, the statements from the clinic, yes. But something else that stuck in my mind now seems more important.
“The mortgage company,” I say. “Julie Larimore made payments to two mortgage companies.”
He kneels down next to the car, watches as I open the envelope I’ve been seeking.
It was here all along. I just haven’t known where to look for it.
I touch the address of the property as the truth sinks in.
“Los Olivos,” I say. “She owned the property the old winery is on. That’s where she went when she disappeared.”
“So, who lives there?” Lucas asks, and I shudder with the knowledge.
“Julie’s father.”
Gabriella
She crouched on concrete, on all fours. Someone had vomited. She could smell it, taste it. She could hear now the words that came from her mouth. “No. No. No.”
“Shut up.”
Tania Marie half dragged her behind a looming vat that smelled of wine-soaked wood.
“Where’s Rochelle?” she managed to squeak.
“Shut up,” Tania Marie repeated, then reached down along the ground. “Look for a rock, for anything. I’ve got one, and I’ll smash the bastard’s head in.”
Gabriella trembled and pressed her forehead against the wood. She had fallen apart, like a bundle of sticks, and at this moment she most wanted to live, she was going to die, the way Christopher had died.
A door opened, not the one they had run through, but far to the right side. The light waited outside. The man came in, closing the door behind him.
“Ladies?”
Gabriella bit her lip to keep from screaming. Tania Marie squeezed her shoulder. Please don’t let him move this way.
“Ladies, we need to talk. There’s been a misunderstanding. There’s nothing to fear here if you just listen to reason.”
The voice was rich, commanding. He talked like a police officer directing traffic around an accident.
“Let me escort you back to your car,” he said. “The driver will be fine.”
Fine? Gabriella choked back tears. Tania Marie’s fingers dug deeper.
She felt him pause, as a stalking animal does. He’d heard her, smelled her fear.
“You have a choice, ladies.” Then a click in the darkness. “You can come out, let me help you get back home, or you can make me come looking for you. Not a good idea, let me tell you. You don’t want to make me mad.”
“Don’t do it.” Another voice, high-pitched with the lunacy of fear, rang out not far from them. Whoever it was had also hidden behind a vat. Not only could the woman see them; she could direct the monster to their hiding place.
“Shut up, Ellie.”
“And what if I don’t? Are you going to kill me, too, Daddy?”
“I said, shut up.” He began to thrash in their direction. “Do you think I’d ever hurt one of my daughters? Haven’t I always tried to take care of you and your sister?”
“No, Daddy. Jules was the one who took care of us.”
“She never stopped loving her daddy, even though we both made mistakes over the years. That’s why she bought me our old place, why she came here when she needed help.
” He spoke softer, hypnotically, moving closer all the time.
Soon, he’d see them, yet there was no place they could dare to move.
Tania Marie didn’t even appear to be breathing, but she continued to squeeze Gabriella’s shoulder.
“It wasn’t my fault what happened to her.
I’m a medic, ladies. I took good care of my daughter, but something happened and she got real sick. ”
“You know what happened, Daddy.”
“I mean it, Ellie. Shut the hell up or you’re in for it.”
“Jules wouldn’t want you to do this, she wouldn’t.”
“She told me what to do, just as she told you what to do.”
“She didn’t say to kill them.”
“She told me what to do. Now, leave me do it or you’ll have hell to pay.” He moved a little closer. Gabriella could make out his silhouette, right down to the rifle.
“She didn’t mean it. She knew how sick she was. She didn’t want anyone to know why. She didn’t really want you to kill Tania Marie. She’d be horrified at what happened here.”
Tania Marie gulped. Now Gabriella clutched her. The entire cellar lay quiet, submerged in the silent, surreal world of scent. Earth, oak, wine, time.
Then movement. The crunch of heavy shoes, combat shoes.
“Ladies, don’t listen to my little girl here. She’s just had a terrible shock. We both have. Come on out, now. Don’t make me pick you off one by one.”
“She ate, Daddy. She ate, even after the surgery, because she had a hole in her life that couldn’t be filled, regardless of the size of her stomach.”
“Liar.”
Now he’d find them. He stood inches away, panting like a bull.
The woman stepped out. Walked to face him. Yes, it really was Ellen Homer, Bobby Warren’s assistant. And she saw them. Even in the darkness, Gabriella could make out her blond hair and slender form and knew that Ellen saw Tania Marie and her. She moved away from them, and the man followed.
“Her stomach was this small.” Ellen clenched her fist. “It couldn’t hold even a cup of liquid, but that didn’t stop her. She ate herself to death. The stitches exploded, and she died. He got rid of her body in the ocean so that no one would know what killed her.”
“I warned you, Ellie.”
“In case you really are here,” she said, looking away from them, “I want you to know that my father made me call Tania Marie. He wanted to get her here alone because she saw my sister at the clinic, saw what had happened to her. He made me do it.”
“I don’t care what they think.” He was drawn to her, though, following her through the shadows of the winery. “They can’t leave now, anyway.”
“I was the one who tried to scare you,” she said. “Jules was still alive. She didn’t want anyone else to be Killer Body.” She sobbed. “It was her life.”
“Get out of here,” the man demanded. “Leave me to take care of this.”
“He’s sick,” Ellen said. “He did try to help Jules, but no one could help her.” She stood with her back to them, addressing the wall of barrels, her voice harsh with tears. “She didn’t want you to hurt them, Daddy. She just wanted to scare them.” She turned to him. “Come on. Let’s leave now.”
“No.” He pulled back the rifle, turned it on her. “Get out of here.”
“I’m not going. You killed that man out there.”
A short silence, and then his voice, strangely distant. “Well, then. You don’t leave me much choice, do you?”
He hit her with the rifle, as if swatting a fly. A loud smash, a moan. Ellen collapsed into a heap. Gabriella gasped, unable to control her trembling, in spite of Tania Marie’s strong fingers digging into her. Tears coursed down her face.
The silhouette holding the rifle stopped and swung slowly toward her.