Текст книги "Legacy"

Автор книги: Jeanne Stein

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Текущая страница: 12 (всего у книги 18 страниц)

CHAPTER 41

TAMARA HAS ONE HAND ON THE DASH, ONE AT her throat, massaging bruises already starting to form. “You’re insane, you know that? You almost killed me back there.”

Her voice sounds like it hurts to talk, like she’s scraping the words across sandpaper. Good.

“Almost being the operative word. What were you doing at the hotel?”

“What do you think I was doing? I was there to see you.”

“Did Sandra send you?”

She shakes her head.

“So, what? You tracked me down to finish what you started in the bar?”

For a moment she looks puzzled at the question. Then she smiles. “Crap. If I wanted to fight you, you’d already be bleeding in the dirt.”

I jab the side of her head with a finger. She flinches, recovers and then smiles again, ruefully this time.

“Okay. You got the best of me back there, but only because I didn’t see it coming. Would’ve never happened otherwise.”

“Right. You do know what I am, don’t you?”

“A hot-shit vampire? Is that supposed to scare me?”

“Unless you really are dumber than you look.”

Tamara stops massaging her throat. I feel her tense. She’s tired of my insults, tired of the verbal sparring. “So. You want to throw down? Pull the fucking car over and we’ll do it.”

For one second, I actually consider it. Beating the shit out of Sandra’s minion would really feel good. Except that I have no quarrel with Tamara. My quarrel is with Sandra.

“I don’t want to fight you. I want you to tell me what you were doing sitting on the hood of my car. Think you can handle answering that simple question?”

Tamara is glaring at me. “I was ready to tell you that back at the hotel. Before you dumped my ass on the sidewalk. You didn’t ask then, though, did you?”

“No,” I say through gritted teeth. “You scratched my car with those fucking chaps. What were you thinking?”

“It’s only a car,” she shoots back.

“Yeah, well, remember that sentiment when I drop-kick that Harley of yours from here to tomorrow.”

For once, she doesn’t have a comeback. In fact, when I sneak a look at her, she has a pensive look on her face. I don’t know what surprises me more, that she might be considering the possibility that I feel about my car the way she does her Harley or that she’s capable of thinking at all.

I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt. “Let’s start over. Why did you want to see me?”

But before she answers, she sits up in the seat. “Where are we going?”

She’s finally noticed that we’re heading out of the city. I’d hopped on 5 North and now swerve toward the Interstate 8 East exchange. “We’re taking a drive to the mountains.”

“The mountains? Why?”

“I’ve got someone to see.”

“I don’t want to go to the mountains.”

“I don’t remember asking you. I had only two hours to get up there and back. You made me late.”

She snorts. “You’ll never make it in two hours. Not in this.”

“You insulting my car again?”

“Calling it like I see it. You want to make it to the mountains and back in two hours? I’ll take you. On my bike.”

I look over at her. I know she’s right. The Jag’s fast. On the highway. Half the trip to the cabin is on back roads. Dirt roads. I barely had enough time to get to David’s cabin and back before my run-in with Tamara. If I want to get into Jason’s house, I have to be back here as close to two as possible.

I don’t remember seeing Tamara’s bike parked anywhere near my car. As that thought percolates, I realize I’m going to accept her suggestion. Why not? Now I know I can take her. She’s not Sandra.

And I’m curious. She still hasn’t told me why she’s here.

“Where’s your bike?”

She smiles. “Pull off at the next exit and go back. I’m a block from the hotel.”

I do it, putting as much menace as I can into my tone when I say, “You’d better not be fucking with me or . . .”

“Yadda, yadda, yadda,” she says. “I know. You’ll beat the crap out of me and kick my bike. Christ, you vampires are all alike.”

It takes us exactly fifteen minutes to get back to the hotel, find Tamara’s bike and prepare to head out again. In the car I told her where we were going so I swing behind her on the Harley, watch while she slips on her helmet and ask if she has one for me. Now safety is not a concern for me. If we crashed, it’d take my landing on a wooden fence post to hurt me, but there are helmet laws in California and getting stopped by a cop would be one more delay.

When I mention that to Tamara, she reaches into a saddlebag and hands me an orange knit cap, hand knit it appears, with head flaps. Along with a headset. “So we can talk on the way,” she says.

No kidding. I slip on the headset and adjust the microphone, eyeing the cap. “Jayne’s mom know you have this?”

She doesn’t say anything. Probably never saw Serenity. I jam the cap on my head, asking, “This really passes for a helmet?”

“If you’re going fast enough.”

Then she proves what she means by gunning away from the curb at fifty miles an hour.

Obviously, cops aren’t the concern to Tamara they are to me. She weaves in and out of city traffic, hits the freeway going about eighty and launches that Harley like a rocket once we hit open road. With all that, she doesn’t draw as much as a raised eyebrow from the motorists we fly past. It’s like we’ve become invisible.

Once I’ve gotten used to the breakneck speed, I relax my grip on her waist and sit up straighter.

“It’s about time,” she grumbles. “You were about to cut off my circulation.”

I can hear her loud and clear through the headset but the knit cap offers no protection from the wind. My eyes are soon streaming. “I feel like an idiot in this cap.”

She doesn’t laugh out loud, but I feel her shoulders shake. “You should see how you look.”

I resist the urge to smack her. “Not a good idea to piss off a vampire,” I growl. “I could break your neck and take that helmet before your brain knows you’re dead.”

She’s quiet for a moment, then she blows out a breath. “Listen, as much as I enjoy trading insults with you, there was a reason I came to see you today. I’m worried about Sandra.”

Not exactly what I wanted to hear. My shoulders tighten, my stomach lurches. “And you’re coming to me because Sandra and I are such good buddies?”

She shakes her head. “No, I’m coming to you because you’re the only one who can save her.”

That does provoke a laugh. “You can’t be serious. Do you know what happened last night? She worked some kind of spell on me. She had me seeing and hearing things. Things I didn’t ever want to see or hear again. I’ve told everyone I know that I don’t want Avery’s estate. She can have it. All I want is for that bitch to leave me alone.”

I can’t see Tamara’s face, but I feel her back stiffen, see her hands tighten on the handgrips. “It wasn’t Sandra,” she says.

“Oh, right. It wasn’t Sandra. Listen, I don’t know exactly how she did it, but somehow she knew things Avery said to me. She even wore a copy of the damned dress he gave me. She scared the shit out of me, and I don’t like being scared. So, if Sandra really is in some kind of trouble . . . Gee, how can I put this? I don’t give a fuck.”

“You should.” Tamara’s voice has become hard. “Didn’t you wonder how she did it? How she knew so much about you and Avery?”

“I know how she did it. Listen, since I’ve become vampire I’ve seen all kinds of weird shit. I’ve seen witches raise demons. I’ve seen shape-shifters shift. I know empaths and psychics. I know how she did it. It was a spell. I have no intention of ever letting her get close enough to do it to me again.”

“It wasn’t Sandra,” Tamara says, more forcefully this time.

“Then who was it?” I’m so angry, blood pounds at my temples. I’m shaking at the memory of the wrenching terror that had me vomiting at the side of the road. “If it wasn’t Sandra, who the fuck was it?”

“And you called me stupid,” Tamara snaps. “It was Avery.”

“Avery?” I repeat, loading the word with as much scorn as I possibly can. “You mean the Avery I staked during the fight that almost killed me? The Avery that dissolved into dust and blew away on a puff of air? That Avery?”

That’s what I say to Tamara. Inside my head, though, a sudden, startling kernel of doubt turns my thoughts in a disturbing direction. When Sandra looked at me, when she spoke Avery’s words, she looked and sounded different. That had to be part of the spell, though, right? If possession was even remotely possible, Williams or Frey would have said something.

“Do you get it now?” Tamara says after a moment. “Avery has taken over Sandra’s body. He’s doing it to get back at you. He hates you so much he’ll do anything, even kill Sandra to do it.”

No. I shake off the doubt. It’s not possible. “Avery is dead.” It’s unequivocal. “I killed him. I thought Sandra was psychotic. She’s delusional as well. So are you if you believe what she’s telling you. We’re almost at my partner’s cabin. I’ll drive back with him. You want to take a message to Sandra? How about this? I don’t want to see either of you ever again. If I do, I’ll kill you both.”

CHAPTER 42

AMARA STARTS TO SAY SOMETHING, BUT I CUT her off. “I know what Sandra is doing. She’s getting revenge because her cheating husband was getting ready to dump her ass. It’s the only thing that makes sense. How she found out about Avery and me in such detail, I don’t know. Maybe she’s a voyeur and she was there that night watching us. Maybe that’s how she gets her rocks off. What I do know is that possession isn’t possible. I staked Avery and he didn’t disappear or fly away or turn into a rat. He dissolved into dust. Into dust.”

“You don’t understand,” Tamara says.

The vibe she’s sending off is hostile, anxious and powerful as a bad smell.

It triggers defense mechanisms of my own. If she tries anything, the vampire Anna is ready. I lean forward, tighten my grip around her waist again until she whimpers, and whisper, “I don’t want to understand.”

Tamara grows quiet. We’re approaching the turnoff that takes us off the highway, into the woods. For the next fifteen minutes we bounce along on a dirt road. Then, dead ahead is the last turnoff to David’s cabin. It’s not marked, so I drop my hands, touch Tamara’s shoulder and point to the left. She maneuvers the Harley smoothly into the turn. I had braced myself because I wasn’t sure she would. I figured she might take it at breakneck speed, bank sharply and dump me off the bike.

The dirt road drops off after about half a mile and becomes hard-packed gravel. Tamara downshifts and reduces speed. She can’t see the cabin. It’s set back about a mile and completely hidden in the pines. I remember how I felt when I saw it for the first time. Tamara is in for a surprise.

I point to the left again, to a paved driveway. She takes it, and I wait for her reaction when we round the last bend and the cabin comes into view.

Predictably, her shoulders jump. If I could see her face, I’m sure the eyes would be big and the mouth agape.

The “cabin” is a two-story affair, about twelve rooms and three thousand square feet. It’s made of pine, stained a color close to that of a setting sun—or blood. David’s father built it in the early seventies, right after the birth of his son, from logs harvested from their own land. Then David invested a lot of money during his football years to upgrade and renovate the place. There are two big stone chimneys, one at each end, and a wraparound porch in front. The windows are all open, and sheer curtains move with the breeze.

Tamara stops the bike in front and dismounts. “Who owns this place?” she asks.

I swing off the back and pull the cap off my head. “A friend.”

I start away from the bike, but Tamara puts a hand on my arm. “This isn’t over.” It’s spoken quietly, but the harshness of the threat comes through.

I shake off her hand. She’s probably right. The next time I face Sandra, though, it will be on my terms.

I head toward the front door but sounds from the back stop me: the rhythmic swish of an ax through the air and the crack as it hits wood. I switch directions.

David is splitting logs in a clearing behind the cabin. He’s bare chested, sweaty and oblivious to our approach. Earbuds attached to an iPod at his waist explain why. I can hear the music. I could hear the music even without vampire hearing. He’s got the volume turned way up. He’s listening to Incubus, one of his favorite alternative/rock/trash/whatever groups.

He’s really gotta be depressed.

“That’s your friend?”

I turn to look at her. Tamara is staring, her mouth open. “Why are you still here?”

She doesn’t answer, which makes me take another look at David. I guess I’ve known him for so long, I’ve become oblivious to how he must appear to other women. He’s a big guy, hard muscled, broad shouldered, lean. He’s wearing a pair of jeans, tennis shoes, no socks. His face is darkly handsome, strong mouth and jaw, full lips, blue eyes, cross-cropped dark hair. He swings the ax with easy grace, the muscles on his bare arms barely rippling with the effort. He’s not aware that he has an audience, so there’s no self-consciousness, no coyness in the way he’s attacking that woodpile.

And attacking is what he’s doing. I bet I know who he’s thinking about.

Tamara is still staring. She’s making no move to leave, so I tell her to stay here while I get his attention. No sense scaring the shit out of him and maybe getting bashed in the head in the process.

I cross around in front. He’s so engrossed in the work and lost in the music I realize calling out to him isn’t going to do it. I wave my hands and jump up and down until he catches the movement and looks my way.

His face turns red. He holds the ax in front of him like a weapon. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

“Good to see you, too. Want to put the ax down so we can talk?”

He’s still glaring when Tamara moves to join me. She’s grinning like an idiot. “You’re David Ryan, right? Heisman Trophy winner? Played tight end for the Broncos?”

Now it’s my turn to stare—at Tamara. “You know who he is?”

David switches his gaze from me to Tamara. Curiosity softens the anger. The ax falls to his side and he pulls the earphones from his head. “And you are?”

She thrusts out her hand and takes a step toward him. “Name’s Tamara. People call me Tammy. I brought Anna up here. Didn’t have any idea who we were coming to visit though. I can’t tell you how thrilled I am to meet you.”

I’m listening to this openmouthed. People call me Tammy? That’s like calling a tiger “pussy.”

David is smiling. He takes Tamara’s hand and shakes it. “Football was another lifetime ago. I hardly think about it anymore.”

“No way,” Tamara says. “You were a great player. If you hadn’t gotten hit in that Giants game and hurt your knee, you’d still be playing. It was a cheap shot, and Rutherford should have been thrown out of the league.”

I can’t believe what I’m hearing and seeing. Talking to David, Tamara’s demeanor softens and damn, if she doesn’t even look different. Prettier, somehow, more feminine. Christ, is this another spell? Here I am listening to a muscle-bound Amazon, a werewolf, no less (and one I would have sworn had a lesbian thing for Sandra), gushing over a muscle-bound, strictly heterosexual ex-jock whose chest is starting to swell like an overinflated inner tube. Her sense of purpose in bringing me here seems to have vanished.

“You know how I got hurt?” David asks, clearly flattered that she does.

That’s it. I step between them. “Hey. I came up here for a reason, and I don’t have all day. You two can continue this trip down memory lane another time. David, we have to talk.”

The pleasant face he’s showing Tamara morphs into the angry face he wore the first moment he saw me. “I told you to leave me alone.”

“Believe me, I’d love to. Unfortunately, I can’t. Gloria needs you. Another thing I can’t believe I’m saying. You have to come back to San Diego now.”

It’s David’s turn to look incredulous. “What are you talking about? Why would you think I’d be interested in anything to do with Gloria? Are you nuts?”

“You get that question a lot, don’t you?” Tamara says to me with a smirk.

I ignore her and focus on David. “Gloria is in trouble.”

“No shit. She’s in jail for murder.”

I shake my head. “She’s out on bail, but she may not be for long. She’s at County General Hospital. The official story is she tried to commit suicide.”

Emotions play across David’s face like a fast-forward slide show—fury, hesitation, concern, distrust. “I don’t believe it. Gloria would never try to kill herself. Is this a trick?”

“Good question. Detective Harris is working on that now. The important thing is, if she doesn’t have anyone to stay with her, they may revoke her bail. I can’t do it. I’m working on something else. You could. Will you?”

David slams the ax into the log he was splitting when we arrived. “Let’s go.”

No questions, no indecision, no wavering.

David goes inside to grab a shirt.

Tamara watches as he walks away. I think she’s forgotten I’m here. She’s focused on the door David disappeared through like a puppy eagerly awaiting her master’s return.

David is back in two minutes. He secures the cabin and comes down the steps, pointing to the Harley. “That your bike, Tammy?”

She nods. He fishes keys out of the pocket of his jeans and tosses them to me. “I’ll ride back with her. You take the Hummer.”

Tamara beams, David takes her arm and steers her toward the bike, and I’m left standing alone on the porch.

Nice to see he’s over Gloria.

CHAPTER 43

I WATCH DAVID AND TAMARA PEEL AWAY DOWN THE driveway with a rooster tail of flying gravel. Have I fallen down the rabbit hole? It occurs to me that I didn’t tell her not to mention the fact that I’m a vampire to David. Or to warn her what will happen if she’s entertaining thoughts of delivering David to Sandra to use as leverage against me. But I remember the stupid way she looked; her brain was vapor locked by giddiness. What are the odds my name will even come up?

Any skepticism I had that Tamara and Sandra cooked up this visit today to trap me into another meeting vanished with the look of pure delight on Tamara’s face when David wrapped his arms around her waist. I wonder how she’s going to explain her distraction to Sandra? Or is Sandra a football fan, too?

Christ.

I walk around back to the carport and climb into David’s Hummer. After my Jag, driving it is like wrestling alligators. It does better on the open road, though, and I head right for the O’Sullivan house.

The O’Sullivans live in Fairbanks Ranch, a wealthy enclave in northern San Diego County. It’s two fifteen when I pull up a block away from the O’Sullivan compound. Fairbanks Ranch is not a gated community. It doesn’t have to be. Each residence has a gate and fence all its own.

I’m debating whether to walk from here or drive up to the house. I have a better chance of getting in and out without notice if I walk. On the other hand, the streets of Fairbanks Ranch are wide and tree lined and patrolled regularly by a security company. If I leave the Hummer here, will it attract notice?

The answer comes immediately. A sedan marked “Fisher Home Security” has passed by twice in the five minutes since I arrived. The second time, the car pulls to a stop behind the Hummer and the driver’s door opens.

I watch in the rearview mirror as the uniformed guard approaches. He’s middle-aged, gray, balding, with a slight paunch. His bearing suggests a military background, erect, stern. He has one hand on his belt, resting on the handle of a long flashlight, the mannerism of one who was used to carrying a gun. The military was most likely followed by a stint as a cop.

I roll down my window and wait.

The guy touches two fingers to his forehead in a greeting. “Afternoon, ma’am. Are you here to visit a resident?”

Behind his dark sunglasses, the eyes are cautious. I guess they have to be when you’re responsible for the security in a neighborhood where the median price of a house is three million dollars.

I put on a bright smile. “Yes, sir. I’m visiting my aunt. I’ve had a bit of car trouble. I called my boyfriend, and he’s sending a tow truck. It shouldn’t be too long.”

He casts an eye toward the hood of the Hummer. “Want me to take a look for you?”

“No, thanks. It’s not necessary. This has happened before. I’m going to walk on over to my aunt’s and wait there for the truck.”

“I’d be happy to drive you,” he says. “Want to give me the address?”

“Actually, it’s right around the corner and I don’t mind walking. It’s so beautiful here.”

He is studying me, no doubt wondering if I look like an ax murderer or a burglar or, even worse, a vagrant. Evidently, I pass inspection because I get the two-finger salute again and he leaves me with a curt “Have a nice day, miss.”

He returns to the car, and I notice he takes the time to write down the Hummer’s license plate. I notice because he wants me to. In fact, he makes an obvious show of it before getting into the car, a not-so-subtle message that I shouldn’t try anything because he has my number. The fact that I’m driving a seventy-thousand-dollar automobile does not make me above suspicion here at Fairbanks Ranch.

I half expect him to shadow me when I get out of the car, which would pose a problem. He watches me lock the Hummer, and I feel those eyes follow as I walk up the sidewalk. In a second, though, he starts the car and pulls around me, sending me another of those quasi-salutes.

I trot up to the O’Sullivan gate. There’s a camera, but it’s focused on the gate, not the keypad, and it doesn’t swing toward me when I punch in the code. Jason’s doing? If he thought to disable the camera, too, he’s one smart kid.

The gate swings open and I sprint inside, keeping to the bushes that line the drive. I don’t know how many security cameras they have on the property and I doubt Jason does, either. The one on the gate is obvious.

From the road, you can’t see the house, but I know what to expect and I’m not disappointed. The O’Sullivans live in a big, square Tudor set in the middle of an acre of manicured lawn. From the outside, the house appears to have a hundred rooms. The paving stone driveway circles the house. Jason said his dad’s study was in the back. I head in that direction.

The ground level of the house has about two dozen sets of French doors. I have to peek into each room before I find the one that matches the pictures of the crime scene. I wish I had gloves. Unfortunately, I didn’t expect to be driving the Hummer. I expected to be driving my Jag, which is where the gloves are. So I do the next best thing. I pull the hem of my T-shirt free and cover my fingers with the cloth to try the door.

It opens.

I step inside, close the door and wait to see if I’m greeted by the shriek of alarms.

Nothing. So far, so good.

The den looks exactly like it did in the pictures—except O’Sullivan’s body is no longer sprawled on the desk. The forensic team evidently released it as a crime scene because there is no yellow tape and the room has been cleaned. It appears the desk blotter has been removed, and there is a piece of carpet cut out from the area where O’Sullivan’s chair rested. The chair is gone as well. There’s a box of Kleenex on a sideboard. I pull one out. Since I doubt I’ll find anything of interest here, I move out of the room, using the tissue on the doorknob, and try to locate Mrs. O’Sullivan’s office.

Jason said it was upstairs. The first challenge is to find the stairs. The den opens into a gallery almost as wide as my living room. It’s paneled in dark mahogany, lined with portraits. The combination of dark paneling and a collection of intricately framed gloomy portraits of stuffy-looking gentlemen in early eighteenth-century garb sucks the air right out of the room.

I hurry through and try the door at the other end. Success. This door leads to the entry hall. There are rooms on each side and in the middle, a double curved staircase right out of Gone With the Wind. I ignore the flanking rooms and run up the stairs.

I should have asked Jason to draw me a map or at least tell me which of the twenty closed doors I’m looking at is his stepmother’s office. Since I didn’t, and I’ve never met her, I can’t rely on my sense of smell to ferret her out. At the head of the stairs, though, I pick up a flowery citrus scent. Feminine and subtle. Expensive. I follow it to the third room on the left.

This is definitely a woman’s room. Rose-colored wallpaper, blond French Provincial furniture. Bedroom furniture. Mr. and Mrs. O’Sullivan must have had separate bedrooms. My hunch is confirmed when I open the connecting door to my left. This is a man’s bedroom, heavy, dark furniture, hunting scenes on the walls, the scent of musk.

I close the door. There’s a deadbolt on Mrs. O’Sullivan’s side.

Interesting.

On the opposite side of the room is another door. This leads through a massive walk-in closet. Must be a thousand pairs of shoes. At the far end, is one more door. I try the handle.

It’s locked.

Shit. I wasn’t expecting that. I could easily break down the door, but that wouldn’t be very subtle, now would it?

I kneel down to examine the lock. It’s a simple key and tumbler. No deadbolt. In my day job, David and I have jimmied this type of lock a million times. The only problem is I left my purse in the Jag back in town and in it, my set of picklocks. Maybe I can do it the way they do in movies—use a knife from the kitchen or a nail file from Mrs. O’Sullivan’s bathroom.

I go in search. First, the bathroom since I’m here. Either she never does her own nails, or she carries her only nail file with her because a cursory search of her bathroom vanity finds nothing. I’m not about to turn her drawers inside out. I run back down the steps to the kitchen.

It takes me a while to find it. I’ve never understood why anyone would want to live in a house so big that it takes a map to navigate the maze of rooms. It’s getting close to three o’clock, and I want to get out of here as soon as I can. After several false starts through living rooms and dining rooms and media rooms and rooms whose purpose I can’t fathom, I finally find the kitchen.

A kitchen about fifty yards long with a hundred places to hide the knives.

Shit again. I start pulling open drawers. The tissue is about in shreds and the idea of kicking down the door is looking better and better when I find a silverware drawer with something that looks like it could work. It’s a thin-bladed butter knife. I grab it and run.

Picking the lock is not as easy with a knife as it looks on television. It takes several attempts at wedging the blade between the doorjamb and the lock before I get the feel of what I need to do. Even then, the knife blade slips, leaving thin scratches on the woodwork. Finally, I feel the lock give and the handle turns at my touch. Unfortunately, the blade of the knife breaks at the same time and I’m left with pieces that I stuff in my jacket to discard later. Hope Mrs. O’Sullivan doesn’t count the silverware.

It’s three fifteen.

Mrs. O’Sullivan’s office is not what I expect. Compared to the carefully appointed and immaculately clean rooms in the rest of the house, this room is furnished in early American yard sale and cluttered with dusty piles of old magazines, newspapers, scrapbooks, photo albums—the detritus of her thirty some years of life beforeshe became Mrs. Rory O’Sullivan. There are framed pictures of beauty pageants, glittery rhinestone tiaras, ribbons marking her progression from Miss El Cajon to Miss San Diego to Miss California, and culminating in the title of runner-up to Miss America. They stop there. Photos show her with Mr. O’Sullivan, one of the celebrity judges for that pageant. Her life as a beauty queen ended with a runner-up sash and the biggest prize of all.

I maneuver my way through the stuff to a desk thrust against the wall. It’s as piled with junk as the rest of the room. There’s nothing of obvious interest on top and everything is so dust laden, I wonder if she ever comes in here.

I try the drawers. The middle holds nothing but pencils, pens, paper clips, broken rubber bands.

The right-hand drawer is a file drawer. From the dates on file tabs, nothing has been added to categories such as “Bills Paid,” “Recipes” and “Misc” since 2003, the year she met O’Sullivan. No tab marked “PI Investigating My Cheating Husband.” Too bad. It would have made my life so much easier.

The left side of the desk holds two drawers. The first is empty.

The second is empty, too.

Except for one item.

A gun.