Текст книги "Hemlock Veils"
Автор книги: Jennie Davenport
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Текущая страница: 3 (всего у книги 24 страниц)
But she wouldn’t know just how spectacular the view from her window was until morning. The motel sat at the top of Red Cedar Loop, which curved above town and, according to the Thurmans, placed it within dangerous reach of the monster. They’d said they never had guests for that reason: everyone was too terrified of the darkened forest her window faced.
She imagined the view, how it would look with a little light and less rain. While lying on her side, she couldn’t remove her mind’s eye from it. Or from him, of the way he looked at her. He was out there somewhere, probably bleeding. Would he survive? Had Hemlock Veils seen the end of their terrorizing beast, who Elizabeth didn’t think was so terrorizing after all?
She would never tell them her secret: that she thought him as harmless as the next resident of Hemlock Veils. They’d think her just as satanic as their beast. She would never try to explain the desperation in his eyes during their stare-down, or the way he gave her a pass. The way he seemed too intelligent to be a ravenous monster. But what was he? Who was he? And why had people in the diner stared at her with awe when Eustace had finished explaining what happened to them?
There were a whole lot of things about this place she didn’t understand. Even the people were a mystery: the way they loved the place they feared. Regina, the woman whose skin was the color of molasses, had seemed most skeptical of her at first. But something changed in her after Eustace’s recounting; whether it was pity for Elizabeth’s encounter with the beast or a strange reverence, Regina welcomed her now. She’d called Bill Thurman herself so he could check her into his vacant five-bedroom motel. Bill had been so excited to have a guest he’d even turned the motel’s neon sign on.
When Elizabeth had searched through her leather shoulder bag for her wallet, to pay Bill, she’d found everything soaked through. But worse, the locket her father had given her many years ago had vanished. She’d removed everything three times, and again when she arrived to her room and hung all her clothes and underwear—and the damned money—over the shower curtain rod to dry; but the locket was gone. She’d had it when leaving California, and that meant it had probably fallen to the sodden forest floor. Probably it came out when she and her bag got tossed over the fallen log.
She willed it to stay put, wherever it was, since it was the only good thing she had left of him. And as she closed her eyes, seeing again the monster with a lost soul, she let herself breathe, truly breathe, for the first time since Willem came smashing through her door one week ago.
Chapter 4
Elizabeth had just come home from work when three panicked knocks shook her apartment door. She’d snuck quietly to both deadbolts, making sure they were secure, when the door thumped again, startling her back and making her neighbor’s terrier yap across the hall. Her apartment wasn’t in the safest neighborhood in Boyle Heights, but any complex in Boyle Heights would prove just as risky for a white woman living alone. She hated relying on deadbolts and pepper spray, but eleven years ago, after high school, this place was all she could afford. Mr. Vanderzee had offered to put her up in a loft near work, in Bel Air, but only if she would cut ties with her brother. He had to know she never would, but every once in a while he’d throw the offer out to remind her of the kind of life she could have without Willem. But here, in Boyle Heights, Willem was close enough to keep some measure of tabs on, so she could live with being viewed by her Hispanic neighbors—most of the time coolly—as part of the two-percent minority.
The door banged again, and she swore if it was any harder the flaking paint on her walls would have floated to the floor. “Beth!”
Her heart sank in both relief and dread.
“Beth! Lemme in!” Willem pounded again, even as she unlocked the door. Before she could step away he crashed in, knocking her back against her shelf of cookbooks.
“Will,” she said, steadying herself. His pale blue eyes were bloodshot and glassy, his cheeks sunken, and sweat coated his pallid, shaved head. No matter how many times she’d seen him this way—more often than not the past two years—it felt like the first. But this time it wasn’t just the side effects of being high. This time he trembled with fright. And something—a sinking inside—told her that whatever he was about to ask of her would be more detrimental than any of his past favors. Even more so than the last, which had almost gotten her arrested for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. She had already determined that was the last straw, but she hadn’t expected him to need something again so soon. Or to look this desperate when needing it.
He slammed the door behind him, breathing heavily, and looked all around them as though a million pairs of unseen eyes watched him, hiding in her vintage furniture and framed family photos. He blinked rapidly, as always. “They’re gonna kill me, Beth.” Tears hung in the corners of his eyes, lurking.
“Who?” she asked, keeping her distance.
“I’m in too deep this time.” He exhaled the sob she’d been anticipating, running a trembling hand over his moist head then down his face. His fingers stayed at his mouth, tapping, and to himself he whimpered, “It’s over.”
“Willem, look at me.”
He didn’t. And the side of her that would do anything for him wanted to take him in her arms until all his problems vanished. She wanted him better, she wanted him home.
“It’s not too late to clean up—”
“Fuck off, Beth.” He glared, and saliva collected in the corners of his mouth like it would on a crying baby. “I’m not here for a lecture.”
Elizabeth tightened her lips. “Leave.”
“What?”
“Leave. I won’t do this anymore.”
His sobbing turned apologetic, and his whimpers pathetic. He cowered before her, his clammy hands grasping hers. “Please…Beth. I’ll never ask for anything again.”
She shook her hands free, backing up.
“Your promises mean nothing. I can’t always bail you out. I love you and you know I’d do anything for you—hell, I’ve given up everything. But—”
“How? Working for that rich cock-sucker and living the good life? I’m just asking for a little of it.”
Her heart grew hot, and the swelling fire filled her. “Just a little? I guess I’m mistaken for thinking I’ve given you everything. And for what, so you can run out and screw up your life again, even worse than the last time? You’re not just screwing yourself, Will! You’re screwing me, too!”
“I know, I know.” His mood shifted faster than she could get a handle on it. “I know, Beth. But it’s different this time, I swear. I know you’ve given up a lot to help me—”
“What do you know?”
“I…know you’re happy with your life, and you’re always teaching me—”
“You think I’m happy?” She recoiled. Living the good life was one thing, but happy? “Will, what I am isn’t happy. I just make the best of what I have. You think I was happy taking over for Dad when he died, missing out on the normal life of a teenager so I could make sure my brother wasn’t out getting high, beaten, or arrested? Was I happy putting every cent I earned from the time I started working into cleaning you up?” She backed him into a corner. “Was I happy dropping out of nursing school when I had one semester left, just to take on more hours with Mr. Vanderzee so I could pay for your damn rehab?”
Her chest heaved in the silence, and Willem’s eyes held only a trace of fear. She sighed, dropping to the couch, and finished tiredly, “That’s not being happy. That’s being a fool. That’s holding to Dad’s dying request that I never give up on you. That I do everything to help you. So don’t say I should give you a little, when everything I’ve done is for you.”
She met his eyes, the color of a dawn sky; the life in them was barely there. “Has it meant anything to you, Will?”
“You’ve…always had my back.”
She shouldn’t have expected more. “Maybe I shouldn’t have.”
He shook his head. “Don’t say that.”
“Look. I don’t know what trouble you’ve gotten yourself into this time, but I can’t help. No more drug debts, no more jail bonds, no more medical bills for overdoses, and no more goddamn rehab. I can’t…” She paused, hating herself even as she spoke the words. “I won’t stick my neck out for you anymore. The truth is, my brother died a long time ago and I’ve been wasting money on a ghost.” She’d never spoken such harsh words to him before, and she couldn’t meet his eyes, even though she knew there wouldn’t be anyone real staring back.
“I never asked you to send me to rehab,” he said through his teeth.
“So all your ‘I’m cleaning up’ speeches were acts?”
With a shrug, he sniffed. “You…always came.”
The pain in her heart should have made her sob. “And it’s my fault,” she whispered to herself, finding it hard to breathe. The reality astounded her, the one she’d never let herself think, since she’d always believed one day, with enough help, he would change. Just as her father had said only minutes before he’d passed: Don’t give up on him no matter what. Anyone can change. Turns out she had been doing all the wrong things to help him.
“There’s one last thing you can do to help, though, Beth. And I swear on Dad’s grave it’s the last thing.”
“Don’t swear on Dad’s grave.” She stared at the floor. She couldn’t look at him, this time out of mere disgust—with him and herself.
“I need a little money, that’s all.”
“Get out.”
“Beth, please. I mean it, they’ll kill me.”
A corner of her heart ached, telling her to jump up and save him. But the rest of her didn’t believe him. He’d said it before.
She was guiding him to the door when tears began fleeing his eyes again. “Louis Dimas,” he said. And then in a rush, “Jacob Maceno.”
She pushed him, staring. Vaguely, the names rang a bell.
“Martin Soto,” he finished with more reverence. For the briefest moment, when another tear fled his bloodshot eye, she saw a flicker of Willem—the old, real Willem. Martin Soto had been Willem’s best friend last year, the one Elizabeth had begged Willem to stop associating with—the one who always got Willem stuck in the same hole. But three months ago, Martin Soto had been shot, and the story had been all over the local news.
The other names, the ones that had pricked her memory: they were other murder victims from that same week—all young men and all shot in the head. Willem had actually shown a trace of sadness during that week. She’d hated those boys who called themselves friends of Willem, but the attachment he felt to them made her realize there were still some healthy human emotions remaining inside her brother. And those boys, no matter what life they got mixed up in, didn’t deserve murder.
“What about them?”
“It’s the Paddock brothers.”
She shook her head, confused. “Will…”
“They all owed ’em. Louis and Jake and Marty…they couldn’t pay.”
“These Paddock brothers, they murdered them?”
He nodded. “And now it’s me who owes. I ran out…I’m next if I don’t pay. But…they don’t just want my share. They want theirs, too.”
Elizabeth huffed, folding her arms over her sickened abdomen. “That’s ridiculous. If you know it was them, turn them in.”
“You don’t think anyone’s tried? You remember that kid, the ten-year-old who was beaten behind Joe’s garage a couple weeks back?”
Elizabeth hardly nodded. The news had hit her apartment complex hard, since the kid was Guillermo from 4D’s nephew. It was tragic, and the boy had been hospitalized. He’d survived.
But it wasn’t soon after that his older brother had been murdered.
“He was a snitch, Beth. The kid witnessed something and decided to be brave. And it was his family that suffered. It won’t be long before they’d be coming after you, too.”
“How do these Paddock brothers have so much power?”
Willem shook his head, lifting the corner of his mouth in a condescending grin. “You have no idea. They have followers everywhere. The cops’ve tried to arrest them, but they have nothing on ’em. No proof.” He stepped closer, his eyes more intense than she’d seen tonight. “You think you can change the world and spread your goodness, but some people are invincible. Beth, your ideas are naïve as fuck.”
She shoved him again, her rage building almost enough to blur her vision. “Why? Why would you get mixed up in that? You really think I can save you this time? It’s you who’s naïve!”
Willem swallowed hard. He looked around, blinking and squinting and blinking again—a nervous twitch he’d acquired sometime during the past year—trying to eliminate the invisible sand in his eyes. “Frank.”
Elizabeth almost laughed. “You’re crazy if you think Mr. Vanderzee would give you a cent.”
“You can convince him.”
“Will.” She grabbed his shoulders, looking him squarely in the eyes. He still blinked and she tried hiding the panic in her voice. “He despises what I do for you. Everything I’ve ever given you—it hasn’t been without a lecture first. He would never loan me a cent for you.”
He didn’t even appear injured. “Then…don’t try to convince him.”
She studied him, trying to grasp his meaning.
“Don’t ask,” he emphasized. He sniffed, wiping a finger over his nose, and never dropped his lifeless, blinking eyes from hers. He didn’t care what she would lose by risking everything for him, as long as he was saved.
“You…want me to steal from him?”
“This is the last thing I’ll ever ask of you, and I mean that, Beth. It’s just…a hundred K.”
Her eyes widened. “Just a hundred? You said you needed a little cash.”
“Well, to someone like Frank, that is a little.”
“I’m not stealing from my employer! How can you even ask me to do that?”
“What about me, Beth? Huh? How can you not care that my life is on the line?”
“Don’t. Don’t turn this on me.” She shoved him, then opened her door and shoved him again, landing him in the hall. She ached to cry. She ached to change everything about her life that had brought her to this point. “Don’t drag me into your life anymore, Will.”
She closed the door in his face and he begged through it, pounding his fists and sobbing as though his life was being taken at that very moment. She folded her arms over herself as she leaned against the door, trying to remain detached. Trying to block out the sound. Trying to breathe.
She closed her eyes. I love you, Will.
After an excruciating minute, his shadow passed the open window, then paused. When she moved the curtain, she found him on the sidewalk, phone to his ear.
“Juan…I can’t. I tried to get it, but…” Willem broke, choking on a sob he tried to hide.
He ran his hand over his perspiring head and paced, clearly not fond of what he heard on the other end.
“No.” He grew desperate. “Just…relax. I’ll find a way, I swear. I’ll get it to you. Just give me ’till tomorrow night.” Short silence. “No, no. I won’t fuck up.” Pause. “Yeah. I know what’ll happen to me if I do.”
One-hundred-thousand. He wouldn’t get it.
And he wouldn’t survive. The knowledge was so palpable it took Elizabeth’s breath. And she found herself overcome with the memory of Willem at seven years old, one hand in hers and one in their father’s, laughing as they raced through Hazard Park. He laughed because Elizabeth and her father had let him win. It wasn’t long before he fell and cut his knee, and where Elizabeth would have wanted their mother at his age, Willem wanted her. He crawled into her arms, weeping. And while she bandaged his knee, he made her promise she would always be there to take care of him, even when he was a grownup. I couldn’t live without you, Bethy, he’d said.
Even then, when her father hadn’t fallen sick yet and she was barely twelve, she’d been the only mother Willem had ever known. And just like she’d promised then, she’d promised him every year after. Always mending the wound, always making it better. Always holding to an unrealistic hope that her love for him would be enough.
Only it wasn’t, and never had been.
***
“Remember three o’clock, Elizabeth,” Mr. Vanderzee said through Elizabeth’s earpiece. Not even the phone could mask his arrogance. “Not a minute past. Mr. Fluckiger will be ready and waiting.”
Thankfully, he couldn’t see her rolling her eyes. “Yes, Mr. Vanderzee. Three. I’ll be there.” Was it just a coincidence that this crisis with Willem happened to fall on the same day as her monthly meeting with Heritage Financial to discuss the status of Mr. Vanderzee’s accounts?
The line clicked without a goodbye, as it usually did, and Elizabeth ripped the earpiece from her ear, burying her face in her hands in Mr. Vanderzee’s large kitchen. Spacious granite countertops, high-tech appliances, dozens of mahogany cabinets filled with every ingredient imaginable—all stocked by her of course: it was her dream kitchen, and her favorite place in Mr. Vanderzee’s mansion. He let her make it her own, in a sense, only because he had a weakness for what she could create here.
When he’d first hired her as his housekeeper twelve years ago, she’d hardly spoken a word to him. He’d been away most of the time, but three months after hiring her, he’d fallen sick. After a week of waiting on him hand and foot, a strange and unique bond formed between them. He had a certain respect for her, one she saw even through disrespectful words. There were certain things he could never bring himself to do—certain affection a man of his status simply couldn’t show his lower-class housekeeper. But he cared about her. She saw it in the way he attempted to buy her a better life, in the way he was so protective of her—especially with her brother. Soon after that week, he’d fired his other help and deemed her his “Everything Girl.”
Her days hardly veered from the routine: arrive at Mr. Vanderzee’s at precisely six a.m., start his coffee (he’d given her a limitless allowance to spend in his kitchen, and after a rather exciting month of experimenting, she’d mastered a coffee brew so perfect Mr. Vanderzee said it should take over every coffee chain in America), lay out his clothes, make him breakfast, drive him to the office in a Rolls-Royce far too exquisite for her taste, return to Vanderzee Mansion, clean, clean, and clean some more, be at his beck and call in case certain errands needed running or impossible things needed to be asked of her, return to the office at the end of the day to drive him home, and finally, cook his dinner.
Sometimes he would even let her eat with him. It wasn’t until after he finished and the dishes washed that she was free to go home. When she had been in nursing school, her days would end after picking him up from the office, but to Mr. Vanderzee’s dismay and delight, she’d needed more money to pay for Willem’s rehab. Mr. Vanderzee was always opposed to the way she came to Willem’s rescue, but he also loved her cooking, more than anything else she did, and couldn’t deny her request to work through the evening if it meant another meal cooked by his Everything Girl. Her days were long and exhausting, and at every moment she felt pulled in every direction; but being on Mr. Vanderzee’s payroll made taking care of Willem possible.
The peculiar old man had a curved spine and liver spots atop his bald head. He was welcoming and at the same time cold. He loved her and at the same time despised her. He kept a watchful eye as though she might turn on him at any moment, yet he not only trusted her in his kitchen—her kitchen, as he now called it—he trusted her with his most personal and favored of all assets: his bank accounts.
He was the founder and CEO of a global accounting firm, as well as an entrepreneur who, in his younger years, began many companies he still held shares in today. Or so the rumors went. He was known as one of the wealthiest businessmen in the western United States, and highly respected—or feared—by most. But there was one thing Elizabeth had always found odd in his trust of her. He had a countless supply of experienced and ingenious accountants readily available at the tips of his fingers, yet Elizabeth managed his money. Elizabeth, who knew nothing of money and had never cared to. She had told him this in the beginning, but he insisted. He gave her strict directions about what went where and when, but that was all he’d ever said on the matter, other than, “I trust you, Elizabeth.” And she was the only one he trusted. No one touched his accounts, most of the time not even him. With someone like her, he said—someone naïve on the matter—he didn’t need to worry about scandals and misdeeds.
And here she was, sitting at his oversized dining table that looked more like a conference table, imagining how simple it would be to do as her brother asked: steal from her trusting employer, Mr. Vanderzee.
Really, it would be simple. He had three accounts, one of which had always struck her as odd. It never served a purpose she could see. He never wanted anything withdrawn and never spoke a word of its function. Like a second savings account, it only accumulated money. It was his smallest, barely 1.2 million—chump change in comparison to his other accounts, which themselves were chump change to the wealth he had invested. And never did he keep tabs on it; never did he give it a second thought. Her instructions were simple, and as long as she kept adding to it, he never laid eyes on it. Even the bank trusted her with Mr. Vanderzee’s money—with his life. It was her they associated with Mr. Vanderzee’s accounts, her they let make every decision. If money needed to be withdrawn or transferred, no one would ask.
She’d never stolen a cent in her life—never stolen so much as a crumb. And the previous night, after Willem had left her apartment, it hadn’t even been a question for her. No matter what, she would never betray Mr. Vanderzee that way. She would never let anything—even a death threat—take her integrity.
But as the day had worn on and the same haunting image of Willem frequented her mind—the one of him as a child, making her promise to always protect him—she found her determination waning. She found her palms sweaty and her hands trembling. She found her head aching and her stomach in knots. She found her mind distant and her heart heavy. Even Mr. Vanderzee had stepped outside his cold boundaries that morning and asked what troubled her. She would never tell him, though, never ask for the favor. It would only weaken her in his eyes, and he would always refuse. So she’d simply smiled and taken his dishes to the sink, side-stepping the question.
But she had to do something.
Willem. Shot point-blank in the head.
A swelling sickness rose in her stomach, leaving her faint, and she ran to the bathroom just in time for the recently polished toilet to catch her heaving stomach. How she threw anything up was beyond comprehension, since she hadn’t eaten since the evening before. And she threw up until her stomach was a hard knot, having nothing left to give the toilet.
Still, no tears. Just a sick stomach, clammy hands, and an acrid taste in her mouth.
She flushed the toilet, washed her face, rinsed her mouth, and left the bathroom. Picking up her phone, she dialed Willem’s number, all the while fingering the locket around her neck. Her father had given it to her for her fourteenth birthday: a long silver chain with an engraved circular locket at the end, stuffed with a picture of her as a child on one side and a seven-year-old Willem on the other. He’d told her it was so she would always remember who Willem really was. So she would remember they were a pair.
“Beth,” Willem answered in a panic. “You change your mind?”
Closing her eyes, she gritted her teeth. She hated herself, along with him. “I’ll meet you and the Paddock brothers tonight. I’ll have it all.”
