Evidence of Life - By Barbara Taylor Sissel Page 0,99
into an embrace. “Give it time, sweet,” she murmured.
Chapter 23
A dark blue sedan was parked behind the house in Abby’s spot when she came home from visiting her mother’s, as if it belonged there. Abby braked for a moment, considering, and then pulled in behind it. Nadine wasn’t leaving until they had it out. If Abby had to call the police on the reporter, she thought, she would do it. She pulled her keys from the ignition, got out of the BMW, and walked around the blue sedan. It was an Impala, not a Taurus, and it was empty. Abby started for the house and then looked back, suddenly remembering her wild drive the other night. She’d seen the blue car then, too, parked behind her on the feeder. It was ridiculous. The woman was following her, obviously. But why?
“Nadine?” she called, rounding the front of the house. There was no answer, no sign of the reporter.
Abby took her cell phone from her purse as she retraced her steps, but then she was unsure whether to dial Charlie’s number or 911. She’d never changed the locks as he’d advised. And she should have, she thought, when the backdoor opened without the assistance of her key. Somehow she wasn’t surprised, although she distinctly remembered locking it when she’d left. She pushed the door a bit wider even as she told herself it might not be the smartest thing to go inside on her own. But she was on her own now, right? She had to learn to take care of things by herself, and certainly she could handle Nadine Betts. Abby gripped her phone tightly in one hand and her keys in the other.
“Nadine?” she called and she didn’t bother keeping the annoyance from her voice.
“No,” a woman answered.
Two steps took Abby into the arched doorway that divided the den from the kitchen, and she knew that instant whom she would find instead of the reporter. Abby knew just as surely as if Sondra had announced herself.
“You.” The word out of Abby’s mouth was an accusation, an indictment.
“Yes,” Sondra answered. She was sitting on one end of the sofa, all blond elegance in her oversize white linen shirt and slender jeans. A smooth turquoise medallion framed in ornate silver hung from a chain around her neck, a vivid splash of color against the warm honey shade of her skin. There were bracelets on her wrists, rings on her fingers. Her feet were as narrow and slim as the rest of her and cased in pale blue flats that tapered into points at her toes. She looked relaxed, sitting there with her legs crossed at the knee, one flat dangling. She looked as if she belonged on Abby’s sofa. She had even pushed the bed linen Abby slept under to the opposite end.
“How did you get in?” Abby demanded.
Sondra held up a key.
“Where did you get that?”
“Nick gave it to me.”
“I doubt it,” Abby said, because she didn’t want to imagine that he would do something so unconscionable, so heartless. “You need to leave. Now.”
“I will when you give me Nick’s jacket.”
Abby stared, nonplussed.
“You took it,” Sondra sat forward. “Out of my cabin the day you came there with Hank. I want it back.”
“I saw you!” In her mind’s eye, Abby recalled the view from the cabin’s back window, the fringe of woods, the figure she’d seen slipping among the trees.
“I nearly froze my ass off waiting for you to leave.”
“Well, that’s not my problem. Please, go.”
“Nick gave the jacket to me,” Sondra said matter-of-factly. “It’s mine now.”
“You’re out of your mind.”
Sondra grinned smugly and reached for her purse, a huge soft-sided tote, the same shade of blue leather as her flats, and pulled it onto her lap.
Watching her fish through the contents, Abby wondered in a distracted corner of her mind what she was hunting for.
“You met Kim, right?” Sondra glanced up at Abby. “Hank’s idiot of a sister? She’d love to see me committed, or better yet, dead. But never mind that. I’ve been in here before, did you know?”
There was a spark of glee in Sondra’s voice now, as if she were pleased to announce this, to share the good news. But something else was swimming in her expression, too. Something darker and frayed.
Unbalanced. The word appeared in Abby’s mind. Her heart paused. She held up her cell phone. “Leave. Now. Or I’m calling the police.”