Rachel smiled. “She and Mandy were always the good girls.”
“So were you, honey.”
Rachel shrugged. “I just didn’t have the guts to do anything bad.”
“No, that wasn’t it. You were just too smart to do anything really stupid.”
“I had a crush on Jake. That was pretty stupid.”
“That was youthful foolishness.”
She cleared her throat. “DeLynn had a nervous breakdown right after college and attempted suicide. She spent two years in therapy. And April Wright had an abortion our senior year of high school, then in college she got hooked on drugs, but she turned her life around a few years later and has been clean and sober ever since.”
“Kristen did some drinking and used marijuana in college. That’s it for her, except for one police report about a minor road rage incident five years ago.”
“Martina went through a court-appointed anger management course,” Rachel said. “It seems she had a problem with a neighbor and wound up painting red polka dots on his chartreuse green house. That was eight years ago.”
“There seems to have been an epidemic of teenage pregnancies,” Dean said. “Bella got an abortion, too, which is surprising, considering that her parents were staunch Catholics. I’d have thought she would have done as Lindsay did and have the baby, then give it up for adoption.”
“Poor Bella.” Rachel shook her head. “April put out in high school because she thought it was the only way to get a boyfriend. I knew she was having sex with several different guys. But Bella having an abortion surprises me. I had no idea she had a boyfriend, that she ever dated for that matter. She was more than a year younger than the rest of us, just a kid really.”
“Bella had some severe emotional problems after Jake’s murder.” Dean laid the three reports down on top of his desk. “It seems her parents put her into therapy for a couple of years.”
Rachel heaved a deep sigh. “I don’t know what I expected these reports would prove. I guess I hoped something would show up that would point us in the right direction.”
“All the reports proved is that nobody’s perfect.”
“Two nervous breakdowns, one road rage, one illegitimate child, two abortions, one drug addiction, one suicide attempt, one anger management class. Nothing that shouts ‘I’m capable of cold-blooded murder.’”
“So what now?” Dean asked. “Dig deeper? Move on to the guys who were closest to Jake or-?”
“You’d be on that list.”
“Yeah, I would.”
“You didn’t kill Jake.”
“No, I didn’t kill him, but…” Their gazes linked, the connection sexually charged. “If he had ever hurt you, I would have.”
Chapter 30
As she pulled a small, rusty metal cart behind her, the bag lady with the stringy gray hair hanging down in her eyes came up alongside Rachel. Several people walked between them as they hurried along the sidewalk, and eventually Rachel moved ahead of the pitiful old woman. But it seemed she could not escape. Either the woman was following Rachel or by some odd coincidence they were heading in the same direction. After several blocks, Rachel’s instincts warned her that the bag lady was indeed tailing her. The poor thing probably wanted to ask for a handout. Just as Rachel reached the red light where she would cross the street, she paused on the curb and turned to face her stalker.
The woman had disappeared.
Odd.
As she crossed the street, Rachel kept glancing over her shoulder. Sensing that someone was watching her, she felt a nervous foreboding.
When she stepped up on the curb onto Second Avenue, she looked back once again. No bag lady. Instead a bucktoothed redhead in thick glasses, wearing a Stetson and boots, appeared as if out of nowhere, her step quick and agile. The unattractive cowgirl wannabe hurried past Rachel, not even bothering to apologize when she brushed into her in passing.
Shivering with an unnatural fear, Rachel stopped dead still and looked in every direction. Strangers surrounded her. Unknown faces stared at her. Weird-looking women in costumes that hid their true identity gawked at her.
Suddenly a tall, handsome young man came toward her, his dark hair and blue eyes heartbreakingly familiar. Jake Marcott smiled at her. Rachel sucked in a deep, terrified breath. A deadly arrow stuck out of Jake’s bloody chest.
The walking dead.
No, this isn’t real. I’m hallucinating.
Rachel woke suddenly, startled for several seconds, uncertain about her surroundings. She lay there, darkness encompassing her, her heartbeat thumping maddeningly inside her head. The residue from her nightmare mingled with reality when she realized she was in the guest bedroom in Charlie and Laraine Young’s home in Portland.
It had been a dream. Just a dream.
No, it had been a nightmare. The gray-haired bag lady stalking her. The ugly, rude, redheaded cowgirl. Jake Marcott’s smiling corpse. None of them had been real.
She shoved back the covers, slid to the edge of the bed, and sat there for a couple of minutes, allowing herself time to awaken completely. Her mind whirled with thoughts, some coherent, others jumbled and confused. Standing solidly on the wooden floor, she stretched her arms over her head, then down to touch her toes. Awake and slightly shaken by the nightmare, she went into the bathroom, flipped on the overhead light, and turned on the faucet. After dashing cold water in her face, she stared at her pale reflection in the vanity mirror.
Her eyes widened. Her mouth gaped. Realization dawned as the water trickled over her cheeks and seeped down her throat. Oh my God! Dreaming about Jake-about his bloody corpse-wasn’t surprising, all things considered. But why a bag lady and an ugly cowgirl?
Because during the past few weeks, she had actually encountered both a dirty old bag lady and an unattractive redhead wearing a Stetson and boots. And there had been a plump blond nanny strolling along with a baby buggy, too. All three of them rather weird.
Disguises!
Each of them had been wearing a disguise. The bag lady, the ugly redhead, and the plump blonde.
Had they all been the same person?
Of course!
Someone was stalking Rachel, keeping tabs on her, playing some sort of sick game.
Rachel dried her face with a hand towel and returned to the bedroom to get her cell phone. She glanced at the digital clock on the nightstand. Five-thirty. Would he be awake at this hour? Probably not.
She flipped open her phone and typed in a text message, then sent it to Dean.
When you wake up, contact me. We need to talk.
Within minutes she received a reply.
I’m awake. Call me. Or come over to my place.
Immediately she called him.
“What’s wrong?” he asked the minute he answered.
“Someone has been stalking me for the past few weeks.”
“Why are you just now telling me?”
“Because I just now realized it,” she said. “I can’t believe it took me this long to realize what was going on. Even though she was wearing disguises and changing them to throw me off, I should have sensed something.”
“Slow down, honey. You lost me at the word disguises.”
“My stalker was changing her looks, wearing different disguises when she followed me.”
“Are you sure about this?”
Rachel blew out an aggravated breath. “I’m not sure of anything. It’s five-thirty in the morning. I had a horrible nightmare in which Jake’s smiling corpse appeared to me. I have to go to Mandy’s funeral this afternoon and…” She clicked her tongue. “I’m just a little scared.”
“Want me to come over there?”
“No, you’d just wake up Charlie and Laraine.”
“How about I pick you up and we go somewhere for an early breakfast?”