Last Seen Alive (31 page)

“Oh, how chivalrous,” Chyna muttered.

She could see Scott smiling in the glow of instruments on the dashboard. “And we also have a destination, Dr. Chyna Greer. Some place where you can have a little fun and stop dwelling on your lack of success in finding Deirdre Mayhew.
Yet.”

Chyna forced herself to toss him a bright smile, but inside she felt dark and worthless, because she was certain she would fail to find Deirdre Mayhew just as she’d failed to find her beloved Zoey twelve years ago.

Rex had tried to keep up a casual conversation as Rusty drove him to Owen’s house, but Rusty could barely answer, shame turning him mute. He wasn’t certain how much any of the three men had heard of his story to Chyna out on the terrace about how he’d watched Nancy run in the evenings, right up to the last evening of her life. They’d all heard part of it, at least the part where he’d said he’d seen her fall and hit her head, then simply run away because he didn’t want anyone to know he’d been watching her. Gage Ridgeway had heard part of it, because he wouldn’t meet Rusty’s gaze before he’d mumbled something and returned to boarding up the window in the living room. Rex acted casual, but then, Rex always acted casual. “Urbane.” That was the word for Rex. “Urbane.” And “opaque.” “Opaque”? Rusty wasn’t sure why that word had popped into his mind, but it had. It had always been hard to tell what Rex Greer was thinking.

Rusty’s own father was another matter. Owen Burtram’s every emotion showed somewhere, no matter how hard he tried to hide it—his eyes, his lips, the white lines between his nostrils and mouth, his throat that seemed to balloon, his
fists.
Rusty always shuddered when he thought of those fists, and when he’d seen them opening and closing in his father’s coat pockets, Rusty knew Owen had definitely heard Rusty

tell Chyna he’d seen Nancy fall and done nothing to help her.

But had Owen heard Rusty saying he’d thought Nancy was running away from someone? That he was sure Nancy was being chased by someone heavier, clumsier—more like a man in his fifties, Owen might think—and that the person who was chasing Nancy had left when she fell? Rusty burst into a cold sweat. Good lord, had his father heard him claim he had
not
seen who was chasing Nancy? Please, please, God, Rusty thought frantically as he broke into a cold sweat, please let Owen have heard him say he didn’t see anyone except Nancy.

But if he had heard Rusty, would Owen Burtram believe his own son? If so, that would be a first, Rusty thought bitterly. Then fright overcame him. What if Owen had heard most of what Rusty had said and hadn’t believed
any
of it? What would Owen do if he knew Rusty had routinely followed Nancy, watching, spying, peering into her most private moments? What if Owen guessed that Rusty even had lingered in the bushes outside of Nancy’s home and watched at night as she undressed, often not closing her curtains?

But he wasn’t the only one who had watched Nancy undress. There had been others. Many others. Some close to home.

Still…

Rusty had taken a Valium as soon as he got home. He’d paced and thought and practiced speeches he’d use on his father tomorrow or, if God was being particularly cruel, tonight after Rex left Owen’s house. But none of the speeches sounded good. Of course, even if Rusty were Shakespeare, he couldn’t come up with anything eloquent enough to quiet Owen’s anger. No one could. Absolutely no one, which was why Rusty’s beautiful, seductive mother had left when he was only fourteen. She’d left Owen and she’d left Rusty, too. He remembered that night so well—that night when she’d loaded three suitcases into her Cadillac, then turned to gaze at her husband and son with the dark, fathomless eyes that

had always intrigued Rusty. “Don’t look so crestfallen, Owen,” she said in her sultry voice, her red lips smiling slightly, tauntingly. “You’ll think up a good excuse for my leaving, something the neighbors will believe.

“And Rusty,” she went on, “you won’t have a mother keeping an eye on your every move, not that I would do so even if I stayed. I’m not that kind of mother. In fact, I was never meant to be a mother. Or a wife. Especially to you two.” She smiled slowly, just a hint of cruelty lingering around her mouth. “Remember me fondly, guys. Or don’t remember me. I really couldn’t care less.” And then she’d calmly climbed into her Cadillac and driven away.

Owen had stood as if carved from stone for at least ten minutes, the only sound emanating from him being his heavy breathing. Rusty had stood beside Owen, feeling like he should say something comforting, feeling like his mother’s departure was all his fault because of the magazines she’d found in his bedroom yesterday, although when he walked in and found her leafing through his secret stash, she’d only looked at him and laughed, saying, “Like father, like son.” Finally, Owen had stridden toward his own car and, without a word to Rusty, climbed in and torn off in the same direction his wife had gone.

Rusty had finally gone inside. He’d sat up all night, watching television. Sometime near dawn, his father had returned, looking disheveled, dirty, and almost wild-eyed. “Go to bed,” he’d ordered. Rusty had immediately run to his bedroom, where he’d stayed for the rest of the day. Later he watched Owen from his window. The man had changed into a suit, combed his hair, and shaved. He’d left, then returned at six, the same time he always came home from the funeral home.

When Rusty had finally slunk down the stairs, his father had been sitting in an armchair reading the evening newspaper. “I brought home some hamburgers from one of those drive-through places,” he said, not looking up from the newspaper. “They’re not very good, but at least they’re filling. I’ve already phoned in an ad for a housekeeper. It will

take a while to find someone suitable, but it
can
be done, even in this town.”

And Rusty had neither seen nor heard from his mother ever again.

He hadn’t loved his mother, but he’d been fascinated by her beauty, her bold sensuality, her clingy clothes, her don’t-give-a-damn attitude. She’d intrigued him, even though he knew she was as contemptuous of him as his father was. Sometimes, though, she hugged Rusty, kissed him on the mouth, and outright fondled him in front of Owen. Rusty had known she was only doing it to make his father mad, but he’d loved those sexually charged strikes at Owen anyway. When she left, Rusty had felt desolate because he knew no one would ever fondle him again. He’d also wondered what had happened to her. Had she simply outrun his father that night and gone on to live the kind of life she’d always wanted?

Or had his father—his domineering, strong, emotionally storm-ridden father—caught up with his escaping wife and she’d never gone
anywhere?
What if his mother, not Zoey Simms, had actually been the first of Black Willow’s “lost girls”?

Rusty began to tremble and nearly ran to the drawer in his nightstand, searched wildly for the bottle of Valium he’d had in his hand not twenty minutes ago. When he finally found it, he popped another one into his mouth with shaking fingers. Then, as he choked while trying to swallow it dry, he stuck another pill in his mouth before rushing into the bathroom and drinking cup after cup of tepid water.

He went downstairs and slid a CD of classical music into his stereo system. Unfortunately, Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto: Adagio filled the room, the same song that had played repeatedly in the “slumber room” where Nancy had lain right before her funeral. Rusty nearly broke the stereo, punching buttons wildly until the drawer holding the offending Mozart CD emerged. He grabbed out the CD and slapped it down on a tabletop, knowing he was scratching it but not caring. He, who was always so fussy about how his CDs were handled

and stored, didn’t care if he defaced this one. He hated it. He’d never listen to it again. Never!

He got control of himself before he snapped the disc in two, then looked at his collection for something with better memories. But he couldn’t concentrate. He couldn’t remember what songs he liked and didn’t like. He grabbed up a CD his father had given him last Christmas:
Great Waltzes.
It had been Owen’s only Christmas gift to his son and Rusty hated it. He decided to force himself to play it tonight, though, almost as a punishment.

After inserting the CD, Rusty nearly ran to the kitchen and found a bottle of sherry. His father said sherry was an old lady’s drink and looked disgusted whenever he caught Rusty with a glass in his hand. But Owen wasn’t here tonight. Owen was with Rex.

For the time being, at least.

Rusty poured the golden sherry into a glass and drank nearly half of it without stopping to take a breath. The liquor hit his stomach like a bomb, and for a moment Rusty thought he was going to vomit. Then his stomach slowly stopped cramping while the sherry spread through his system, warming him, easing him. “Nectar from Heaven,” he said aloud, then almost slapped a hand over his mouth. His father hated when Rusty uttered what Owen called “sissy” phrases like that. Owen. Owen Burtram, always so perfect, so manly, so oratorical in public. In
public.
In private … well, that was a different matter. Defiantly, Rusty looked around his empty kitchen, raised his glass, and almost shouted, “Nectar from Heaven!”

He expected a rush of power to surge through him after he’d bellowed that phrase. Instead, he felt silly. Silly and small and scared. He closed his eyes in misery for a moment, then wandered back into the living room, glass in one hand, bottle in the other.

The room felt stuffy. He looked at the thermostat, which read eighty-four degrees even though it had been set to keep the room at seventy-two. Dammit, he thought. Furnace on the fritz again. Tomorrow he’d have to call the place that

fixed things like furnaces—he couldn’t remember the name of it now—and have a repairman come out for the second time since the new furnace had been installed in September. And he would refuse to pay them, he thought rebelliously, even though the last time the workmen had come, they’d told him the furnace was under a year’s warranty and therefore he owed nothing. He supposed it was still under warranty.

However, this time they would try to charge him, he arbitrarily decided. Yes, they’d try to charge him a bundle. Rusty took a deep breath and narrowed his eyes into what he thought were dangerous slits. Well, they’d get a surprise! He wasn’t a pushover like everyone thought. He’d put them in their place. He’d
report
them! Report them to whom, he wasn’t sure, but the threat of being
reported
usually scared workmen to death. He’d seen his father use the tactic a hundred times.

Mentally practicing the tirade he would turn loose on the furnace repairmen tomorrow, Rusty unlocked and opened one of the sliding glass doors an inch. Cool air leaked into the room. It felt so good on Rusty’s sweaty body that he slid the door open another inch. That felt even better. That felt just fine.

He wobbled over to the couch just about eight feet directly across from the open door and sank down on it. He was now nearly deafened by “Carousel Waltz” and he knew he should turn down the music, especially with the door open—neighbors and all—but he couldn’t seem to make himself move from the couch once he settled onto it with his sherry. The Valium was beginning to work, the effect of three pills heightened by the sherry. Rusty took another gulp of the sherry, almost choking on it. “It’s
not
an old lady’s drink!” he declared to the empty room. “It’s a gentleman’s drink!”

The music roared on. Rusty emptied the bottle of sherry. Then, slowly, he felt sleep creeping up on him. Thank God, he thought. Sleep. Oblivion, at least for a little while. He slumped on the couch and his head fell sideways onto his shoulder. He dreamed of his mother, looking him up and

down with her lazy, sloe-eyed gaze, and even in sleep he felt a thrill.

Maybe the sudden silence had awakened him, Rusty thought as he jerked to attention on the couch.
Great Waltzes
had mercifully ended and Rusty’s CD player didn’t simply repeat the same CD until it was removed. When a CD was finished, the player shut down. Otherwise,
Great Waltzes
could have gone all night. That could have caused a neighborhood uprising, Rusty thought, giggling at the scenario of the house under siege because of his father’s favorite CD.

After Rusty stopped giggling, he struggled to sit up on the couch, yelping as pain shot through his neck, which he’d twisted in his sleep. He was also cold. He must have slept longer than he thought and the temperature had dropped, because the air coming in through the open sliding glass doors wasn’t crisp, it was downright cold.

Rusty staggered to his feet and weaved across the room to the glass doors. One living room lamp burned behind him, casting his reflection on the glass and preventing him from seeing outside. He opened the door farther and leaned out to see that frost had turned the grass spiky behind his house. Damn, it
had
gotten cold tonight, he thought as he retreated into the home, then pulled the door shut. He was clicking the lock shut when he thought he heard a movement behind him.

Rusty looked up. He thought he saw a reflection in the glass—a large, hazy form a few feet behind him. Just as he started to turn around, he heard a rushing noise before something slammed into his body with such force he crashed through the sliding door and landed in a sea of shattered glass and sharp, frost-sheathed grass.

“My head,” he muttered, although his head wasn’t the only thing that hurt. His entire body seemed to sting. “Death by a thousand cuts,” he murmured, remembering the phrase from a movie he’d seen long ago. The phrase had sent a chill over him at the time. Maybe it had been a premonition, he thought for a moment. But just for a moment. Then the instinct for

self-preservation took over. He was badly hurt. He knew that. He needed help.

Rusty tried to call out, but his voice was weak. No lights in neighboring houses came on. Perhaps everyone had stopped paying attention to noises from his house after the blasting music that had lasted for nearly an hour. I need a phone, he thought in a growing fog of pain and confusion. Have to get inside to a phone and call 911 while I can still make sense.