Almost Dead Read online

  A tool that hadn’t been there when she arrived, as the gate had swung open easily.

  All the blood in Cissy’s body turned to ice.

  Her mother’s image had been no ghostly apparition.

  The perfume hadn’t been her imagination.

  Marla Cahill had returned.

  Cherise Favier checked caller ID before answering the phone. When Donald was out of town, as he had been since yesterday’s noon sermon, she was a little more cautious about answering either the phone or the door, or even going outside. It wasn’t that she was scared, not really, it was just that over the years of their marriage she’d ceased being just Cherise. She and Donald were like two halves of a whole. She was used to being with him, a part of something special, bigger than herself.

  She liked being married.

  She’d always liked being married, and this time, she wasn’t giving up. Third time was the proverbial charm, and she’d move heaven and earth to remain Mrs. Donald Favier forever.

  Her life had been in turmoil before she’d found Donald, and she wasn’t going to let him slip away. Now she lived in a large house, supplied by the parish, of course. It was even larger than the last one they’d shared, which only proved how much the parishioners loved her husband.

  Nonetheless, sometimes she was lonely, and her children, all three at college, rarely called, hardly ever came home for visits.

  So she checked caller ID, saw that Cissy was calling, and almost didn’t answer, not after that hideous scene at her house after the funeral. Good heavens! Cissy had acted as if Cherise were asking for more than was her due! They all knew that was wrong, all realized that her father, and all of his progeny, had been scammed by that vile grandfather of Cissy’s.

  She picked up the phone. “Hello?” she said, as if she didn’t know who was on the other end of the line.

  “Hi, Cherise, it’s Cissy,” a raspy nasal voice responded, then erupted into a fit of coughing. “Sorry. I guess I strained my voice talking so much or something. Who knows? It’s mainly laryngitis.” Cissy sounded as if even speaking in a whisper was a real strain.

  “Oh. I, uh, hope you feel better,” Cherise said. She was slightly mystified. Cissy never called. Never. She wasn’t phoning just to make conversation. There had to be a point to this.

  “Look, I’m sorry about the other day. I didn’t mean to blow up at you like that. I was just overwrought, you know. Freaked out about Gran and all. I want to make it up to you.”

  Cherise liked the sound of that, but she was suspicious. She’d known Cissy all of her life, and the younger woman wasn’t one to capitulate or change her mind. “You do?”

  “Yeah…well, I don’t know. I just thought we should talk, and I promise I won’t freak out.”

  That sounded better. Truer to form. “When?”

  “How about tonight? I can get a sitter.”

  “Oh, well…Donald’s out of town. I know he wants us all to get together for a family dinner.”

  “Actually, I thought it should be just you and me anyway. Not Jack or Donald, because they’re not really Cahills.”

  “I don’t make any decisions without talking things over with Donald.”

  “What decisions? I just want to hear what you have to say, but if you’re not interested, then I’m sorry to have bothered you.”

  “No! I mean, of course we should talk. Tonight would be fine,” Cherise agreed quickly, her mind spinning ahead of her tongue. She couldn’t afford to squander this opportunity. She felt something wasn’t right about this, but she couldn’t put her finger on what it was. There was a chance that Cissy was up to something. But what? “What time?”

  “You name it.”

  “How about seven?” That way she could call Donald, tell him what was up, and have him let her know the best way to handle Cissy.

  “I’ll come to your place. If you need to change anything, call me on my cell. I’m going to be out of the house all day.”

  “Okay, I’ve got your number,” Cherise said, knowing that her phone had saved the number.

  “Perfect.” Cissy hung up, and Cherise called her back, just to make sure.

  “Hello?” Cissy answered, sounding just as raspy.

  “Oh, Cissy, I was just checking to see that you know how to get here. Do you have the address?”

  “Gran had it, and I’ve got her Rolodex. She never did trust computers.”

  That sounded legit. Still, Cherise wished Donald were here rather than in Sacramento with a group planning a mission to Mexico. She should just say ‘no’ and insist Cissy wait, but as up and down as that girl was, Cherise knew she had to act fast, strike while the iron was hot. “Well, great, I’ll see you then.” She hung up; then, because she still felt weird about it, she called Cissy’s home, where Tanya informed her that Cissy was out for a while.

  Everything checked out. So why was she being so paranoid?

  Cherise gave herself a talking to. It looked like Cissy’s guilt was finally getting to her. Good, Cherise thought with a smile as she lit the candles in the living room, the same as she did every twilight. It just made the house so much cheerier. Next she sent up several prayers—one of thanks and one for Donald’s safety. Everything in her life was getting better.

  So why did she still feel so nervous?

  “You think your mother was here?” Paterno asked. Cissy Holt had called from her grandmother’s house and sworn she’d seen her mother. Paterno hadn’t wasted a second. He’d driven straight to the mansion on Mt. Sutro, where Cissy, arms wrapped around her torso, had met him in the living room, just a few steps from the foyer where she’d found her grandmother’s body.

  He’d been to a lot of crime scenes, seen mutilated corpses, bloodied bodies, witnessed the most bizarre acts of cruelty done to one human being by another. But never had he felt such a sense of malevolence as he did in this house, not a feeling of out-and-out brutality, more a sensation of cold, calculating, psychological horror.

  That’s what was happening here.

  Marla was purposely terrorizing her.

  And it pissed him off, even more than the keying of his car had…or, well, at least as much. He was still enraged at the dickwad who had scarred his beloved Caddy.

  Cissy had told him a bizarre story about arriving here—how she’d thought she was alone, how she’d spied Marla Cahill in the doorway. She’d almost thought she was imagining it but for the smell of perfume in her car and the screwdriver jammed into the lock on the electronic gate.

  Paterno, using a flashlight, had looked around. He bagged and tagged the screwdriver, looked for footprints in the earth, but the rain had pretty much taken care of anything solid. He wondered why Marla would risk coming here. Had she thought she could hide out? Why hadn’t she spoken to Cissy? And what was the deal with the elevator being sent to the second floor?

  Nothing made sense.

  He called Quinn, and they decided to ask the crime lab to come and look for clues. Eventually Tallulah Jefferson and Roger Billings, another tech, arrived. They made short work of the place, dusted the front door for prints, searched again for footprints, and collected what little evidence there was, even dusting Cissy’s car and vacuuming it in hopes of finding trace evidence.

  “So has anything else strange been happening?” Paterno asked.

  “Everything seems…off,” Cissy revealed. It was dark now; the rain had stopped, but water was still running down the hillside and into the grate in the middle of the driveway. “I’ve misplaced some things.”

  “Such as?”

  She seemed embarrassed. “Nothing valuable. My cell phone, a silver cup that Gran gave B.J. when he was born, and…oh, and my hairbrush, but I think they might all be at the house. There were so many people there the day of the funeral, things got moved.”

  “Your cell?”

  “It was turned off. I thought it was in my purse, but maybe it fell out. Everything else was there. I checked. Credit cards, ID, and cash. Right where I left them.
Only the phone’s missing. I’ve called, thinking someone might have found it and would answer, but it goes right to voice mail. And no one’s called home to the landline which is listed in the cell’s phone book, in case someone found it and wanted to get hold of me. It’s a real pain, let me tell you. That’s where I store everyone’s number.”

  “You think someone stole it?” he asked again, trying to understand.

  She looked away over the iron fence on the lower side of the property to the city, where lights twinkled through a bank of fog. “I don’t know what to think,” she admitted. “My whole life is upside down right now.” Sighing, she checked her watch and said, “Look, I’ve really got to run. The sitter expected me fifteen minutes ago.”

  “Okay. Just let me know if you think of anything else.”

  “I will,” she promised, and for the first time ever, he sensed she trusted him.

  Cissy’s nerves were jangled, stretched thin, her hands grasping the steering wheel as if she were afraid to let go. She drove down Mt. Sutro and merged into Stanyan, following the taillights of an SUV.

  Ever since Gran’s death, her life had been careening out of control. People were dying. Things were missing. She felt as if she were being watched by unseen eyes, and now this…this sighting of her mother. Did that make any sense?

  “No,” she said aloud, and as she stopped for a traffic light she thought about the impending divorce and how torn she was about that too. Had Jack had an affair with Larissa? Was he lying through his teeth, or, as he’d protested, had “nothing happened”? Did it matter whether he’d slept with her at all, or was it the fact that he’d ended up spending the night in the redhead’s apartment?

  Ever since that one disastrous event, she’d suspected nearly every woman she knew of trying to seduce her husband. “That’s nuts,” she told herself, then glanced in the rearview mirror to see her own pained eyes staring back at her. Frightened eyes. Paranoid eyes. Oh God, was she losing her mind? She felt herself quivering inside and gnashed her back teeth together. Get a grip, Cissy!

  She eased around the edge of Buena Vista Park and turned onto Haight Street. She’d go home, play with B.J., make dinner, give him a bath. Once he was in bed, she would strip out of her clothes, cast off her cares, and settle into a tub of hot, scented water. She’d turn on the stereo to her favorite CD, light candles, and even sip some wine. Pamper herself. Find herself.

  She wouldn’t think about her mother, the murders, her estranged husband, her missing things. No, she’d relax and de-stress.

  At the house, she clicked her remote and drove into the garage. Hauling her purse and computer into the house, she called “Hello” but heard no excited little footsteps, no small voice calling excitedly “Mom-mee home,” no giggling. No frantic barking from Coco. In fact the house was silent as a tomb.

  Oh no!

  “Hello?” she called again, heartbeat accelerating. Then she spied Tanya on the patio outside in the dark. She was huddled against the wind, her cell phone to her ear, and when she turned at the sound of Cissy’s voice, she quickly ended the call, snapping her flip phone shut.

  As she stepped inside, she said, “I get lousy reception in the house.”

  “Where’s Beej?”

  “Jack came by and picked him up.”

  “What?”

  “I said, Jack came—”

  “I know what you said, I just don’t understand it,” Cissy cut her off. “I thought you understood that Beej isn’t to leave—”

  “With his own father?” Tanya looked at her as if she’d gone around the bend.

  “Did they take the dog too?”

  “Yeah, thank God.”

  “Where?”

  “I don’t know. He called and said that I didn’t need to bother with dinner. Then he picked up Beej and the stupid dog and they took off about ten minutes ago.”

  “But—”

  “I couldn’t call you,” Tanya pointed out. “And you’re late.”

  “I…ran into some unexpected problems.”

  “Sure.” The corners of her mouth pinched. “Look, I know you don’t like me. I don’t know why. I do a good job, but it’s never good enough, is it? It’s like you were ready to hate me from the get-go. I figure it has something to do with the fact that Jack hired me, and you’re pissed at him. Anyway, it doesn’t matter, I’m giving my notice.”

  “You are?”

  “I’m not sticking around so you can fire me. I know you’re thinking about it, so let’s just get it over with. It’s too bad in a way, because I love Beej. Jack’s great too, but you and I”—she waved her hand back and forth between Cissy and herself—“we just don’t click.”

  Cissy couldn’t think of anything to say.

  Tanya was already reaching for her coat, which hung on the hall tree in the foyer. “Call the nanny school; they have girls they need to place.” She slipped her arms through the sleeves of her raincoat and flipped the hood over her head. “Be sure to mention that you’ve got a dog. It’s kind of a big deal. And…while I’m giving out advice, maybe you should see a shrink. I know you’ve been through a lot, but I think you should talk it over with someone instead of taking it out on me.” With that she walked through the door, slamming it shut behind her.

  Cissy stood in the middle of the hallway.

  What had just happened?

  The nanny had fired her?

  Shoving her hair from her face, she started upstairs when a horrid thought hit her.

  What if Tanya’s lying? What if Jack hadn’t been by? What if B.J. wasn’t with him? It seemed crazy to think that the nanny was hiding something. Why then would she wait for Cissy?

  Who says she was waiting? Maybe you caught her before she left. Maybe that’s what the furtive phone call on the patio was all about.

  No way. She was probably just calling about another job. Don’t make more of it than there is.

  Cissy grabbed the handheld phone and quickly punched out the number of Jack’s cell phone. One ring. Two. “Come on, pick up.” Three rings. Cissy walked to the front window and stared into the black night. No one was out there, and Tanya was long gone, her car no longer parked across the street. Four rings. “Jack, come on!” she nearly screamed as, with a series of clicks, the connection went to voice mail. Nervously tapping one foot, she waited as the mechanical voice told her to leave a message after the tone. “Jack, it’s Cissy. Do you have Beej? I’m home, and I’ve had a horrible day, and Tanya said that—”

  Headlights showed down the street. They moved closer until they reached the driveway, then splashed against the wall as Jack’s Jeep wheeled into the driveway. Cissy was out the door in a flash. “Have you got Beej?” she asked as Jack climbed from behind the wheel.

  “Didn’t Tanya tell you?” He looked around and said, “Oh hell, she took off! I told her—”

  “No, no. She told me…she was here. It’s my fault that I’m freaked out. I had a hellish day!” She was already across the lawn and opening the back door of the Jeep to find her son staring up at her with wide eyes.

  “Hi, Mom-mee!” he said, and his legs kicked in excitement.

  She unbuckled and unsnapped him and pulled him tight against her. He hugged her neck.

  “You miss me?”

  “Oh yeah, honey, Mommy missed you big time.”

  “Big time,” he repeated as Jack pulled out two white sacks that smelled of garlic, tomato sauce, and cheese.

  “Takeout Italian,” he said, “and definitely not pizza. So, you had a bad day?”

  Cissy’s mind replayed the image of Marla in the doorway. “You wouldn’t believe,” she muttered as they headed across the lawn to the still-open front door.

  “Try me.”

  “Later, when B.J.’s asleep.”

  “Would wine and scampi primavera help?”

  Her stomach rumbled. She didn’t know whether she wanted to laugh or cry.

  Seeing her, Jack said, “Ciss…?”

  “Yes. Wine and scam
pi primavera.” She smiled shakily at him.

  “We’ve also got old-fashioned spaghetti and meatballs and Caesar salad.”

  “Perfect.”

  “You look like you’re about to fall down.”

  He reached for her hand, and she let him. Tonight she needed his strength and, though she might regret it later, she decided that they could share dinner and a glass of wine, and draw the shades. She glanced over at Sara’s house and swore she saw her neighbor peeking through the blinds. As Jack pulled the door shut behind them, she caught a glimpse of the street lamp across the street and wondered if the person she’d seen there the other night would return.

  Or was it all a part of her own wild unpredictable imagination?

  She carried Beej into the house, heard Jack throw the lock on the door, and told herself that for a few hours she was going to close her mind to all her fears. Tonight, she was going to drink Chianti with her husband, suck up spaghetti with her son, and maybe, hours later, confide to Jack about what she’d experienced today at her grandmother’s house.

  “You’re telling me that you found hairs around the screwdriver that was jammed into the gate at Eugenia Cahill’s house, and that they might be Cissy Holt’s?”

  “That’s right,” Tallulah Jefferson told Paterno from her end of the phone in the lab. “We had samples of her hair from the crime scene at the Cahill house. Under the microscope, they match the ones from the screwdriver in color and texture. I can’t be certain until I do a DNA test though, and that takes time. There were follicles on both samples, so I’m asking the lab to put a rush on them, but we’re still talking weeks.”

  “So this is just your educated guess?” Paterno said, leaning back in his chair, hearing it creak in protest.

  “Very educated. PhD educated,” she reminded him, though he could hear the smile in her voice.

  “Yeah, yeah, I know,” he said. “The department’s lucky to have you and all.”

  “Damned straight. I’ve got to run, but I thought you’d want to know.”