Текст книги "The Other Man"

Автор книги: R. K. Lilley

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Текущая страница: 14 (всего у книги 17 страниц)

CHAPTER

THIRTY

I was freaking the hell out.  Straight up tripping.

I didn’t even know whom to call to talk it out with, girlfriend-wise.

This was embarrassing and too crazy to be believed.

It was nothing obvious that tipped me off.  That’s why it took me so long to notice that something was different about me.

It was the smell of pizza that did it.

It was just a few days after Heath had visited me.  My boys were over for dinner.

It was Gustave’s turn to cook, and he was making his best dish: Margherita pizza.

I’d taught him the recipe.  We all knew it by heart.  I could pick out by smell and taste every single ingredient he put into the sauce, but as he cooked it, it smelled off to me.

Not like anything had gone bad.  It wasn’t even necessarily a smell I didn’t like.  It was just wrong.

“What’s that smell?” I asked Raf.  We were in the dining room, setting the table.

“That is the best pizza sauce in the world that you taught us both to memorize at birth,” Raf shot back, grinning at me.

He didn’t smell it.

I went into the kitchen, looking over Gustave’s shoulder at the saucepan.  “Did you do something different to the sauce?” I asked him.

He shot me a puzzled look over his shoulder.  “Are you kidding?  Who messes with perfection?”

Well, hell.

Gus didn’t smell it either.

I tried to ignore it, but ended up thinking about it more and more.

The smell of a lot of things had changed to me of late.  But it took something that familiar, a family recipe, to make me realize that it wasn’t the food that was off.

It was me.  I was changing, and that wasn’t the only change.

I’d gained a bit of weight, but I’d attributed that to the fact that I’d gone out to eat so much when I’d been dating Kevin.

And so back to me, freaking the hell out, driving to the store after my sons left, in the middle of the night, to grab a home pregnancy test.

It’s impossible, I reassured myself, for maybe the thousandth time.

It’s at least improbable, I tried telling myself when the impossible didn’t work, because it was simply a lie.

My God, what was I going to do?  This was not a problem I should be having at this stage of my life.  It was ridiculous.  Too silly to give any credence to.

Dammit.

I’d always had problems with the pill, and Eduard had gotten a vasectomy after Gustave was born, so it wasn’t something I’d had to worry about for a very long time.

Until that one night, months ago, when Heath had decided to show up to my house without condoms.

Dammit.

I couldn’t believe it.  It was too silly.  I was too damn old to be dealing with a mistake like this.  Okay, making a mistake like this.

I bought five home pregnancy tests, brought them home, laid them out on my bed, and just stared at them.

And then I used them each, one by one.

And just stared at them.

Five plus signs.

I was well aware how unlikely it was to get five false positives.  The home pregnancy tests were pretty damn accurate these days.

Even so, I made an appointment with my doctor, taking her first available window.

But I knew what I needed to know.

I was pregnant.

Heath had knocked me up.

My first reaction, and it lasted a while, was pure shock.

Heath had left me a number, nothing else, and he’d said very clearly that it was for emergencies only.  That’s why I waited until after my doctor’s appointment to call it.  I wanted to be absolutely certain before I freaked him the hell out right along with me.

“Jimmy’s Market,” an unfamiliar male voice answered the phone.

I thought at first I’d dialed wrong.  But I asked anyway.  “I need to talk to Heath.  It’s an emergency.”

“No Heath here.  Wrong number, lady.”

His tone was abrasive, but I checked the card, and the number I’d dialed, and they were the same, so I went on.  “Tell him Lourdes needs to talk to him,” I tried.

There was a long silence on the other end, and with a curse, I added, “It’s an emergency, like I said.”

More silence.  I hoped the fucker was taking notes.  “Tell him—fuck—tell him I just found out I’m pregnant.”

I hated doing it like this, but I didn’t know this system they were using, didn’t know if I’d get to talk to him directly at all, and I felt strongly that he needed to be aware that he was going to be a father, the sooner the better.

The other line went dead.  Well, hell.

What was I supposed to do now?

CHAPTER

THIRTY-ONE

It was a few days later.  I still hadn’t told anyone the big news except that stranger over the phone.

And I had yet to hear from Heath.

I was just sitting on it.  I figured I’d put off telling anyone for as long as I could, but the fact was, this baby was coming in around six months, and I couldn’t hide it for long.

I was still in the shock phase, and I’d decided to embrace that for a while.

I was at home, photo-shopping a shoot I’d done recently, trying to distract myself with work.

My phone rang, and I checked it.

Unknown caller flashed on my cell.

Well, hell.  I hated answering unknown numbers, but if Heath were going to call, it would likely be from an unknown line just like this.

I answered.

“Lourdes,” a familiar voice said on the other end of the line.

I hung up the phone instantly, cursing at it.

What was she doing calling me?

Christie.

I’d blocked her number ages ago.

Right after I’d listened to her having sex with my husband.

My phone started ringing almost instantly.

The worst ex-best friend in the history of time had the nerve to call me again?

I ignored the call.  When she tried three more times, I turned my cell off.  No way.  There was no reason on this earth I should ever have to speak to her again, for any reason.  Women like her, the home-wrecking variety, should be shipped off to their own island in the middle of nowhere as far as I was concerned.

It occurred to me that with my phone off, I might miss a call from Heath, and I switched it back on a few hours later, but it didn’t ring again.

It was late afternoon and I was just heading out, literally halfway out the door to run errands, bag in hand, when my doorbell rang.

I wasn’t expecting anyone, but sometimes, even though they had keys, Raf or Gus would ring my doorbell, so I went to answer it.

I checked the peephole, because if it was solicitors I was damn well going to ignore it.

It was her.  The home-wrecker.  Christie.  At my house.

Was she demented, thinking she could come here?

She should know better.  I should never have to look at this woman’s face again.  Never have to hear her voice, or breathe the same air.

Dealing in any way with the bitch who had pretended to be my best friend while she fucked my husband was nothing a woman like me should have to do.

When I say we’d been best friends, I mean best friends.  Get up every morning and call each other friends.  Tell each other our deepest darkest fears and secrets friends.  And for over a decade, no less.

I’d never forgive her.

It wasn’t even that I was still bitter about the divorce.  And it sure as hell wasn’t that I wanted my ex-husband back.

This bitch could have him.  Hell, anyone could have him, as long as it wasn’t me.

It was the betrayal.  The kind of betrayal that, to this day, made me feel more alone in the world.

A woman that could do that to a friend, sneak around behind her back for who knew how long, and still smile to her face.

My contempt for her would never change.  It was that simple.

I decided pretty quickly that I’d just ignore her.  If I opened that door, there’d be some kind of confrontation, and I didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of knowing she could get under my skin.

I started to walk away, heading toward my garage.

Her voice, calling out loud enough to be heard through the thick walls of my house, stopped me cold.

“Lourdes!  It’s about Eduard!  He’s been killed!”

Well, that did it.  One second ago I’d have sworn it was impossible, but she’d found a way to get me to talk to her.

I opened my door, staring at the woman that had tried her best to wreck my home.

Tried, I told myself, and feeling it ring true.  My home without Eduard was still intact.  My boys and I were doing just great.

Still, the bitch had tried, and I’d never forget it.

I hadn’t seen Christie in about a year, but she looked like she’d aged ten in that time.

Her blonde hair was stringy with grease, like she hadn’t washed it in days.

She’d always been a thin woman, but she was emaciated now, the lines around her mouth and eyes starkly accentuated by the weight loss.

“What did you say?” I asked her, sure I’d heard wrong or misunderstood, and as soon as she cleared this up, I’d be able to shut the door in her face.

“Eduard.  He’s been killed.  I’m sorry to tell you that way, but I knew you wouldn’t open the door otherwise, and I’ve been trying to call all day.”

I studied her some more, trying to process the information, finding it hard to believe, but the signs of grief were evident in her.  This wasn’t some strange stunt.  She was genuinely distraught.

The woman I remembered had been very well put together with a consciousness for the way she dressed that bordered on vain.  She’d come to my house in sweat pants and a stained tank top.  She was a mess.

My God.  Eduard was dead?  My mind kept jumping around, to her car at my curb, to the yellow patch in my lawn.  Anything normal that did not involve death.

“How?” I finally asked her.

She blinked rapidly, and I could see that she was struggling not to weep.  “He didn’t come home for a few days, and I was really worried.  It’s not like him to disappear for that long.  Overnight maybe, but not for more than one night.”

I’d learned a lot from that little bit.  For one thing, they’d been living together.  I hadn’t even known, but of course it was salt in the wound that she was likely helping him spend the money he’d gotten out of me in the divorce.

“Still,” she continued.  “I didn’t call the police or anything, even then.  I just figured he was off having fun somewhere, and he’d be back, you know, sometime.”

I didn’t know.  Eduard had never done any of his cheating on me out in the open, as he apparently did with her.  He’d gone to great pains to hide it well from me.

If he hadn’t, I’d have kicked him to the curb ages ago.

I was surprised she seemed accept it, but then, what could she expect when he’d been married at the start of their relationship?  Hell, maybe that was what made them compatible.

“But the police found him before I could call them,” she added tremulously.

A chill ran through me at those words.  That sounded ominous.

I blew out a breath.  God, she had me feeling sorry for her, that’s how pathetic she looked just then.

“Do you want to come in?” I asked her.  This did not seem like a conversation we should be having through an open doorway.

She shook her head back and forth rapidly.  “No.”

Whatever.  I nodded at her to go on.

“Someone had called in a tip, a tip about a body in a warehouse somewhere near the strip.”

The word body got to me for some reason.  Made it more real.

Perhaps it was that I was starting to process that Eduard was not a living person anymore, instead he was a body.

Christie was openly crying now, her whole, frail body trembling with it.  “Eduard was murdered, Lourdes.”

I tensed up.  “What?”

“Murdered!  The police said—they said—they said he was evic-er-ated,” she pronounced the word like she’d never said it before in her life.  And she probably hadn’t.   “They found his body strung up, tied by his wrists.  Even they—the police—were shocked by the way he was killed.  They said—they asked me if he had any enemies, Lourdes.  They asked me if he was gang affiliated.”

“My God,” I said dully.  What else could I say?  What did a person say at a time like this?  “I’m sorry for your loss,” I added, because it was the only appropriate thing I could come up with.

At that, her trembling stopped and her eyes hardened.

She pointed at me.  “You know he was about to sue you!”

And then I saw her game.  Why she’d been so determined to tell me herself.

Goodbye, sympathy.  It was real.

I stood up straighter.  She was petite, and I towered over her.  “Are you accusing me of something?”

“You know he was about to sue you, and he—he said you were dating some huge, young, scary guy that kept threatening him.”

I glared at her.  “I was aware Eduard was suing me, thanks for the heads-up, by the way, and I couldn’t have cared less.  As you saw in the divorce, I can afford better lawyers than he can.  I wasn’t worried.  And the only reason my boyfriend ever spoke to Eduard was when he was harassing me.”

“Where is he?  I want to talk to him myself!”

“He’s out of town.  He’s been out of town.  And I’m sorry to hear that happened to Eduard, but it had nothing to do with me.”

She looked unconvinced, to say the least.  She was distraught and grief could quickly morph into rage, and she had clearly settled on a target for her misfiring emotions.  There was no reasoning with a person in that state.

“Well, just so you know, I told the cops all about his threats,” she said unevenly.  “This isn’t over.  Eduard wasn’t in a gang.”  She said the last as though I’d been the one to imply such, when I knew as well as her how ridiculous that was.

“No, he wasn’t.  That doesn’t mean his death had anything to do with my boyfriend.”

She waved a hand at me like she was trying to bat the words away.  “We’ll just see about that, won’t we?”

“I guess,” I said, my voice as emotionless as hers was emotional.  I’d turned off to her.  Sympathy, anger, all of it was just gone.  I wanted her to leave so I could call my sons about their father.  I dreaded that even while I knew I needed to do it before they heard from someone else.

She turned to leave, thank God, but she hadn’t taken four steps before she whirled, snarling at me, “Also, I tried to tell your sons.  They wouldn’t take my calls, either.”

“No, they wouldn’t,” I said coldly.  “Did you think they would?  I’ll tell them myself.”

She left.

I called first Raf, and then Gustave, and asked them both to come over.

I didn’t want to inform them over the phone that their father was dead.

Eduard’s death hit me slow and strange, more of a shock than anything.  It was tragic, in its way, as all life cut too short is tragic, but it didn’t even feel like a loss to me personally.  He’d already been cauterized from my life, and so it was no question that I wouldn’t be missing him.

But the way he’d died, that affected me, got to me.  It was just so awful.

And the more I thought of it, it struck me.

Murdered.

Eviscerated.

That’s what she’d said.  That word, that exact word was already burned into my mind in a traumatizing way.

Because it was attached to Heath, to that story from his gory past.  It was something he’d done to people.

It couldn’t be such a common thing to do that it would come up again and be mere coincidence, could it?

But of course it could, and it was, I told myself.  Heath hadn’t liked Eduard.  Well, okay, he’d pretty much hated him.  But he’d had no reason to kill him.  And certainly not like that.  He’d had no reason to seek him out at all.

I kept telling myself that, but I would have felt so much better if I could have had just one short conversation with Heath.

More than anything, even Heath’s violent past, I worried about how Eduard’s death affected my sons.

It was tiresome, how much I checked up on them the first day, calling every hour to see how they were holding up.

It was odd; they both took it the same, at least from what I could see.  Their reactions were solemn but stoic, and they emphatically did not want to talk about it.

Sadly, they both took it about how I did, with dull perplexity as though someone they’d known had died, but not anyone they’d had a real relationship with.

CHAPTER

THIRTY-TWO

It was evening, the day after I’d found out about Eduard.

I was just getting home after a shoot that had gone on until the last light fell from the sky.  I was tired and ready to crash as I flipped on lights and headed for my bedroom.

I stopped dead about halfway into my room as I caught sight of something through the doorway to my bathroom.

There was something on the counter.  Something odd.  Something wrong.

Heart pounding, I moved into the master bath, eyes staring in disbelief at five objects that should not have been there.

Lined up, a few evenly spaced inches apart, were all five pregnancy tests I’d used.

There was no good explanation for them being back in my house, when I’d emptied my wastebasket, and taken out my trash days ago.

Who would dig them out and put them back in my house, lined up like that?

It scared me.  Badly.  Shook me up.

Who would go to the trouble to do something so strange?

And. . .

Who would be so interested in my pregnancy tests?

God, could it be Heath?

But no.  I dismissed the idea almost instantly.

That woman, the one that had come to visit me?  Somehow I’d still never learned her name, but she seemed to me the most likely culprit.  She had spied on me and could still be spying on me now, and I knew without having to ask that she would not be happy I was carrying Heath’s baby.

Shit.

I stewed on it for a bit while I went through my house, checking every nook and cranny, bolting every door and window.

Finally, I decided to reach out to Heath again.

He’d seemed sure this woman wouldn’t bother me anymore when last we’d talked, and so I thought I should let him know that she apparently didn’t agree with him, because she was bothering me.  Badly.

“Jimmy’s Market,” a neutral male voice answered, sounding bored.  I was pretty sure it was a different guy than the last time.

“I need to speak to Heath.”

“No one here by that name.  Sorry.”

“Tell him Lourdes called again.  Tell him I need to speak to him, and that his female partner is messing with me.”

The man’s voice changed from bored to brusque.  “How is she messing with you?”

“I think she broke into my house, did some strange things meant to freak me out.”

“I’ll relay the message,” the man said, and hung up.

At least he’d given me some reassurance that my message would go somewhere.  It was a vast improvement over the last interaction.

I could be patient if I knew I was at least being heard.

Next I called Raf.

“Hey, Mom,” he answered.

“Hey, baby.  I need ’Tato back, if you don’t mind.  This house is too empty without him.”

“Sure thing.  I had a long enough turn.  I’ll bring him over tomorrow.”

“Kay,” I said absently, eyes darting around nervously.  I didn’t think I’d sleep a wink all by myself after what I’d found, but I wasn’t going to worry Raf with it.

The doorbell rang, and I nearly jumped out of my skin.

“I’ll let you go.  Sounds like you have company,” Raf said on the other end.

“No, no, don’t,” I said instantly, ears tuned to the front of my house as I inched my way there.  “Just stay with me for a minute, okay?  I’m feeling jumpy.  I need to hear your voice.”

There was a long pause on his end, then, “Mom, you sound scared.  What’s going on?”

“I don’t know.  But don’t hang up just yet, okay?”

“I won’t.  And I’ll do one better.  I’m coming over.”

I barely heard him.  I’d reached the front door.  A glance through the peephole was not reassuring.

Some strange man was there, wearing all black, his arms folded across his chest.

After what I’d just found, the last thing I was going to do was open my door to a strange man.

And then he spoke, calling out loudly so I’d hear him through the door.  “Lourdes!  Open up.  Heath sent me.”

I started to, then hesitated.  How on earth was I supposed to know if that was true?

“I’m Mason,” he added.

I did recall the name.  I’d heard Heath say it once, only in passing, when he’d told his sister someone named Mason was waiting for her, but it’d left an impression because he talked about so few people.

“I work with him,” he continued, his voice even at that volume, like he was used to yelling.  “He just barely got your messages, and he’ll be here in about eight hours.  In the meantime, he wanted me to check to see what was upsetting you.  What is it that you found that’s freaking you out?  He said if you wouldn’t let me in to tell you he has something sweet to say to you, just as soon as he gets here.  He said that’d mean something to you.”

It did.  I opened the door slowly, eyeing up the stranger I was about to let into my house.

He was big with dark hair and eyes, tan skin, and a heavy five o’clock shadow on his hard jaw.

He held up his hands in the universal sign for I’m not a threat.  The thing is, if you’re a huge man wearing a gun it just doesn’t work.

“You can just tell me from here, if it makes you more comfortable.  I was sent because of your call, that’s all.  I’m here to help you, however you need.”

Watching his eyes, which were warm and kind and hearing his voice lowered down from a shout, all helped to put me at ease.  I was starting to believe that this guy was who he said he was and began to feel guilty for doubting him.

“I found something in my house that I know for a fact I threw in the trash days ago.”

“What is it and where did you find it?” he asked.

I sighed.  If he knew about the calls, he probably knew about the pregnancy by now, too.  “Five home pregnancy tests, ones that I had used and thrown out in my trashcan, lined up on my bathroom counter.”

He whistled.  “That’s definitely not normal.  And you thought it was Lisa?”

“I don’t know her name.”  I described her in detail.

He nodded.  “That’s Lisa.  I can promise you it was not her.  She was taken off this detail, now I’m on it.  She’s nowhere near here, so if this happened today, that’s impossible.  Can I take a look?”

I grimaced, and let him, stewing as I followed him through my house.  If it wasn’t her, Lisa, than I was fresh out of ideas.

He didn’t touch anything when we reached my bathroom, just studied it closely for a long time.

“Heath’s the father?” he finally asked, his tone unreadable.

I flushed, but answered, “Yes.”

“You’re certain?”

I couldn’t really blame him for asking, here he was investigating an odd situation for me, and if he’d been the one spying on me recently, he knew that up until mere days ago, I’d been seeing someone else.  But still, it smarted a bit.

I tried not to make my voice sharp when I answered, “Absolutely.”

He just nodded, like that settled an issue, and went back to studying.

“I guess the whole idea of privacy sort of flies out the window when you date a man like Heath,” I said, tone light, though in truth I was still coming to terms with that.

“You guess right.  But, you know, it’s all for your safety.”  He waved his hand at the objects on the counter.

Finally he spoke again, “Has anything else in your house been tampered with?  Anything been taken or moved?”

I thought about it, glancing around my room.  My house was neat enough, it wasn’t messy, but it wasn’t particularly organized, either.  I had a lot of stuff, especially in my master suite—clothes, shoes, jewelry, lingerie that never got to be properly utilized.

“I haven’t noticed anything,” I said slowly, “but that doesn’t mean it hasn’t been.  I hadn’t thought of it.  I wasn’t looking for anything like that.  I only saw this because it stood out.”

“Will you look around now?  Take inventory?  Tell me if anything seems off.  Any detail would be helpful.”

I nodded and began a meticulous search through my house, starting with my closet.

I didn’t even know how many shoes I owned.  I only noticed that a pair was missing because they were my favorite.

My black Lady Peep Louboutins were gone, a cubby on my shoe wall empty.  Whoever had taken them hadn’t even tried to hide it.

“At least one pair of shoes is missing,” I called to Mason.

“Okay,” he called back.  “Keep looking, and tell me if you find anything else, especially if it’s something . . . more personal.”

I didn’t explain to him that my favorite Louboutins missing were very personal.  That was nothing a man like him would understand.

“A silk robe,” I called when I noticed another missing item from the closet.  I thought about it and figured I should add, “It was my favorite.  I wore it all the time.  The shoes were a favorite, too.”

He appeared in the doorway of my closet.  “So whoever did this knows you well.”

“I guess,” I said.  “Someone could have found that out by spying on me, like you guys do.”  It was kind of sad how much I’d become resigned to the idea of being stalked.

He cursed.  “I just got put on this detail, but I’ll have to touch base more thoroughly with the person I relieved.  It seems they were slacking on their job.”

“Lisa,” I said coldly.

“Lisa,” he agreed.  “If someone else has been stalking you, she should have noticed it.”

“She hates me,” I pointed out.

“Yes.  I’m guessing that’s why she did a shitty job keeping an eye on you.  Normally she’s the best at her job.  It’s why she was chosen for this, but it was clearly a mistake on our part.  My apologies for that.”

I just nodded at him.

“Keep looking,” he prompted me.

I finished with the closet, but nothing else stood out to me.  That didn’t mean things weren’t missing, though.  Courtesy of my retail addiction, I just had too many shoes, bags, and clothes to keep track of.

I started on my bedroom, going through each drawer of my dressers carefully.

“Are any of those missing?” Mason asked as I was going through my panty drawer, sounding about as uncomfortable as I felt.

I shot him a look.  “I honestly have no clue.  Someone would have to take a lot before I noticed any missing.”

He just nodded, then pointedly looked away.

I kept searching, combing through everything.

I saved the most mortifying thing in my room, for last, of course.  Mason, at least, was still keeping his gaze averted as I opened my toy drawer.

Well, that sounded bad.  It wasn’t an entire drawer of toys, more like a few toys hidden at the bottom of a certain drawer.

I lifted the bit of lingerie that covered the more pertinent contents of the drawer and couldn’t hold back a gasp as I saw what’d been done.

I saw Mason moving out of the corner of my eye, gaze glued on the huge serrated blade set amidst my personal things.  It wasn’t mine.  I’d never seen it before.