Come and Find Me A Novel of Suspense - By Hallie Ephron Page 0,89
leaned Daniel’s driftwood walking stick at an angle against the wall and brought her foot down. The wood cracked. She came down on it again and it broke into pieces.
Diana handed Pam and Ashley double sheets of newspaper and showed them how to roll it, tie it, and shred the ends. When they’d made a half-dozen newspaper logs and she’d nested them in the bottom of the fireplace, she gathered up the pieces of the walking stick and arranged them on top.
They were ready. Pam held a kitchen match. Ashley stood by the stereo system, waiting. When Diana nodded to her, she turned it on. As the first notes of Pachelbel’s Canon filled the room, Pam struck the match on the brick fireplace surround and handed it to Diana. Diana touched the flame to a bit of newspaper fringe.
Ashley passed around the drinks, and together they watched the paper burn. It took a few minutes, but finally the dry wood caught. Then the fire burned hot and fast, white smoke curling up the chimney as, in the music, violins circled and soared.
Diana toasted the flames and sniffed her drink, then took a sip. The smoky tang of the brandy worked its way up the back of her throat and filled her head, as she hoped it would, overwhelming any last phantom sensation of pine resin.
Diana felt Ashley’s hand on her shoulder. “You okay, hon?” Ashley asked.
“I am now, thanks to both of you.”
“You’re the one who pulled it off,” Ashley said. “We just took orders.”
Diana looked at Pam. “You did a great job. I got so caught up that I almost believed it myself when the COO started saying how he’d called the FBI.”
“I borrowed my neighbor for that,” Pam said. “He’s an out-of-work voice-over actor. He doesn’t usually get to ad-lib.”
“If I weren’t retiring, I’d want to hire him as my chief of operations,” Diana said. “He did a brilliant job impersonating one.”
She stepped to the mantel and took down the brass urn that supposedly contained Daniel’s ashes. Ashley lit another match and held it as Diana rotated the urn so that the wax seal holding the lid in place melted. With a pop, it came free. She opened it and peered inside. The contents looked like nothing more sinister than pebbles and sand.
Diana set the urn on the brick fireplace threshold. With a brass shovel from her fireplace tool set, she scooped up the still-smoldering ashes from the walking stick and tipped them into the urn. She unfastened the leather cord from around her neck, slipped off one of the gold Ds, and tossed that in too. Then she closed the urn and held it between her hands. She felt the last warmth seeping from the remaining embers but nothing else.
“So, when are we getting tickets?” Ashley asked.
“You taking a trip?” Pam asked.
“I thought we’d fly to Zurich,” Ashley said. “What do you think, Di? First class? Get to the top the easy way. By train or lift, whatever. Scatter a few ashes?”
“You think they’ll let me through airport security with this?” Diana said, indicating the urn. But as she looked down at it, she realized that it held nothing that mattered to her any longer. More than that, she didn’t want to squander another ounce of energy looking back.
“Why waste a perfectly good trip to Europe on an asshole?” she said. “I have a much better idea.”
She marched through the kitchen, opened the back door of the house, and stepped outside. There, alongside the door, were the dozens and dozens of stones she’d left, lined up like soldiers, each one marking another tentative foray into the outside world. She picked one up and dropped it into a pocket. It would be a keepsake, a reminder of a state of mind she vowed never to find herself in again. With a swing of her booted foot, she sent the rest of the stones flying into the grass.
She flipped open the lid of the nearby garbage can and dumped in the urn’s contents. The urn made a satisfying thud as she tossed it in after.
“Good riddance,” she said as she closed the lid.
Acknowledgments
This book was inspired by the idea that someone could spend her waking hours “living” in a virtual world. For orienting me to that world and showing me its possibilities, special thanks to Jeff Bardin, Olin Sibert, Char James-Tanny, Jim Freeman, Yael Even-Levy, and Michelle Chambers.
Thanks to others who shared their expertise: George Fournier, Cathy Cairns, David Cairns, Doug Lyle, MD, and Anthony Sammarco.
Thanks to fellow writers who provided valuable critiques of the manuscript: Jan Brogan, Linda Barnes, Roberta Isleib, Hank Phillippi Ryan, Naomi Rand, Donna Tramontozzi, and Barbara Shapiro.
A special thanks to Pam David-Braverman for her generous contribution to National Braille Press and allowing me to pinch-hit for the incomparable Robert B. Parker.
Thank you, Jerry Touger, my patient husband, for reading and encouraging.
There can be no smarter or warmer agents than Gail Hochman and her international colleague, Marianne Merola. For savvy and insight and patience, thanks to an extraordinary editor, Katherine Nintzel. Also, many thanks to the rest of the folks at William Morrow, especially Danielle Bartlett.
About the Author
HALLIE EPHRON is an award-winning mystery reviewer for the Boston Globe. She is the author of Never Tell a Lie, which was a finalist for the Mary Higgins Clark Award and was made into the film And Baby Will Fall for the Lifetime Movie Network, and Writing and Selling Your Mystery, which was nominated for both an Edgar and an Anthony Award. Ephron lives near Boston, Massachusetts.
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Also by Hallie Ephron
FICTION
Never Tell a Lie
NONFICTION
The Bibliophile’s Devotional
1001 Books for Every Mood
Writing and Selling Your Mystery Novel
Credits
Cover design by Mumtaz Mustafa
Cover photograph © by Cornelia Doerr/Getty Images
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
COME AND FIND ME. Copyright © 2011 by Hallie Ephron. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition March 2011 ISBN: 9780062078629
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Ephron, Hallie.
Come and find me / Hallie Ephron.—1st ed.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-06-185752-2
1. Recluses—Fiction. 2. Sisters—Fiction. 3. Missing
persons—Fiction. 4. Psychological fiction. I. Title.
PS3605.P49C66 2011
813’.6—dc22
2010037260
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Chapter Thirty-five
Chapter Thirty-six
Chapter Thirty-seven
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by the Author
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Chapter Thirty-five
Chapter Thirty-six
Chapter Thirty-seven
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by the Author
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher