Lynn Osterkamp - Cleo Sims 03 - Too Many Secrets (19 page)

The house was dim, cold and silent. It felt like a tomb to
me, probably because I feared we might find a body there. Even with my warm
coat on, I shivered as I inched my way along in the dusk. Two pairs of boots
sitting side by side in the entryway tripped me up. I gasped, pointing at them.
“Someone’s here.”

“Shh,” Paige whispered. “They’ll hear
us.”

Gayle reached past me and touched the boots. “They’re
completely dry,” she said, “And there are no cars outside and no
lights are on. Nobody’s here but us. She walked ahead of us and switched on the
lights, revealing a huge great room with vaulted ceilings and a stone
fireplace. Beyond it I could see an open kitchen with a breakfast area.

Paige and I stood rooted to our spots in the entryway. Even
with the lights on, the place felt creepy. And those lights shouldn’t be on.

“Shut the lights off,” I shrieked, lunging for the
switch. “People might see lights on in here and come after us.” I hit
the switch and plunged us back into the late-afternoon gloomy grayness. I could
still see a couch and tables in the main room, but the kitchen and halls going
off to other rooms remained ominous shadows.

“What people are you worried about?” Gayle asked..

“People driving by. People who might be watching this house.
People we don’t want to find us.”

“Okay, you have a point. We’ll use the flashlight,”
Gayle said. She pulled a flashlight out of her bag and shone it around the
room. “But it will take longer that way. We’ll have to stay together and
go through each room, one at a time.”

My heart raced as the beam of Gayle’s flashlight swept slowly
around the room. Following it, we bumped our way along the walls of the great
room, opening the doors of large cabinets, looking for anything suspicious.
Then we moved into the center of the room. I knelt and reached under the couch,
running my arms back and forth. I felt something soft and furry. “Eww.
” I squealed, jerking my arm out. “I think it’s a dead cat.”

“Let’s see,” Gayle said, shining the light under
the couch. “Looks more like a hat than a cat to me.” She laughed.

I laughed along with her, then took a deep breath, stood up
and followed her into the adjoining kitchen. I opened the refrigerator, which
contained a couple of bottles of wine, some organic juice, salad dressing,
pickles and such. Definitely looked like leftover summer supplies rather than
someone living there now.

After the kitchen, we began making our way down a dark hall,
presumably to bedrooms and bathrooms. All the doors leading off the hall were
closed. Gayle handed me the flashlight and got her gun out of her bag before
she slowly opened the first door. I shone the light in. Gayle stood next to me
with the gun.

It was a bedroom and it had white walls. Paige lifted the bed
covers so I could shine the light under the bed. Nothing. Suddenly we heard a
loud thump from the closet. We flinched, grabbed each other and stood silently,
pressed against a wall.

Gayle pointed her gun at the closet doors. “Come out
slowly,” she said. “I have a gun and I will use it.”

We waited. No one came out. The closet was silent.

“Okay. Let’s open it,” Gayle said finally.
“Shine the light right where the door opens, Cleo. Then Paige can go
around to the side and open the door. I’ll stand right here with my gun pointed
at the opening.”

I held my breath as Paige pulled the door open. A suitcase
fell out. “Phew!” I said with relief. “It must have fallen off
the shelf and that was what we heard.”

We moved on down the hall to a large dark bathroom. The
stabbing scene from
Psycho
flashed
through my head. My body tightened, ready to attack or run. But I kept it
together and shone the light around. Just an empty bathroom.

The next door we opened showed stairs going down into
darkness. “Yuck, a basement,” I hissed.. “We have to look down
there.”

I took a deep breath, pointed the flashlight into the
darkness and put my foot on the first step. We crept slowly down the stairs, me
first with the flashlight, then Gayle with the gun, then Paige. A moldy smell
made my stomach lurch. As I flicked the light around, dust motes floated in its
yellow beam. The unfinished basement was cluttered with bulky shapes.

At the bottom of the stairs I turned left towards the
furnace, slowly running the light over stacks of boxes. They all looked old and
dusty and none of them looked big enough to have a person inside.

Suddenly Paige screamed. I heard her and Gayle both fall to
the hard concrete floor, and Gayle’s gun scuttle across the floor.

“Something grabbed me,” Paige shrieked. “Get
it off of me. What is it?”

I turned and shone the light back on them revealing a tangle
of snowshoes, one of which was caught on Paige’s foot. Paige was frantically
flapping her leg. She and Gayle pulled themselves free and rubbed their bruises
as they struggled back up.

“I dropped my gun,” Gayle said. “Shine the
light around the floor so I can find it.” I flicked the light around but
the gun was nowhere to be seen.

“It sounded like it went this way,” I said walking
behind the furnace over to the right. They followed. We dropped to our hands
and knees, unsuccessfully brushing our hands around for the gun.

I stood up so I could shine the light farther out into the
room. I saw a washer and dryer, and—uh-oh—a chest freezer. I forgot
the gun search as my mind flashed back to a long-ago episode of
Picket Fences
, a quirky David Kelley TV
series, in which the local sheriff finds a body hidden in a suspect’s home
freezer. My gut told me to run right back up the stairs, but my brain said we
had to look inside that freezer.

I stood rooted to the spot, dizzy and weak. I tried to tell
Gayle and Paige what I was thinking, but, just like in a nightmare, I couldn’t
speak. In my mind’s eye, I could see myself walking over, opening the freezer
and looking in. But my body refused to participate.

Finally my voice returned. “Hey,” I said. “Do
you see that?” I shone the light at the freezer. I had walked a few steps
closer to it, but still wasn’t within touching distance. I stopped. “We
have to open that freezer and look in,” I said.

Apparently Gayle hadn’t watched
Picket Fences
. She stood up, grabbed the flashlight out of my hand,
went over and opened the freezer. She shone the light in and peered down at its
contents. She drew in a sharp breath of surprise, jerked her head up, then
looked down again. “Omigod, I see a foot. It looks like there’s a person
in here, wrapped in a sheet. Omigod, do you think it’s Sabrina?” She
cringed and covered her face with her hands, her bravado finally cracked.

Paige jumped up, ran over and joined Gayle at the side of the
open freezer. She looked in, moaned and turned away, hugging herself. She
looked stricken. “Come look at this, Cleo,” she said. Her voice
sounded weak and small.

“No,” I mumbled, staying right where I was. My skin
crawled at the thought of looking down into that freezer.

Gayle walked over and put her arm around my shoulders.
“You have to look,” she said, pulling me toward the freezer. I
steeled myself, looked in, and saw a pale green striped sheet wrapped around
something long and lumpy with a bare foot poking out the far end. My stomach
heaved.

“I think we have to unwrap the sheet,” Gayle said.

“No,” I said, backing away. “We don’t have to
unwrap it. We can call the police and let them do it.”

“No,” Paige said firmly. “Sabrina was our
friend. “We have to see if it’s her, and if it is we need to see her and
say goodbye before the police turn this into a crime scene.”

My heart raced. I had to somehow convince them not to unwrap
that body. I knew Pablo would be telling us to call 911 immediately. “If
we unwrap this body, we’re messing up a crime scene,” I said. “And
anyway, didn’t you already say goodbye to Sabrina in the apparition
chamber?”

“Never mind.” said a voice from the stairs.
“I’ll save you the trouble of unwrapping it. It is Sabrina.”

The lights blazed on, illuminating the entire room. Gayle,
Paige and I blinked in the glare as we turned in unison to face the staircase.
Lark stood halfway down the steps pointing a gun at us. “We won’t be
needing the police,” she said, her voice hard. “Put your phones on
the floor. Right now.”

Gayle and Paige looked dumbfounded. They seemed momentarily
paralyzed. Of course they were blindsided. Now I regretted not having shared my
suspicions of Lark with them. But she was their friend. Would they have
believed me?

“Didn’t you hear me?” Lark demanded. “I said
phones on the floor.”

I cringed as I pulled my phone out of my pocket, bent down
and placed it on the floor. As I bent over I looked around the lighted floor
for Gayle’s gun, but no luck.

Gayle’s phone rang as she pulled it out of her bag. Lark
grimaced. “Don’t answer that,” she said. “Just put it
down.” Gayle complied.

Paige stared down at our phones. “My phone is upstairs
in my coat,” she said warily. “Do you want me to go get it?”

Lark waved the gun at her. “No. Just hand me those two
phones on the floor.”

Paige picked up the phones, walked slowly over to the stairs
and put them in Lark’s outstretched hand.

“Now step back where you were,” Lark said to Paige.

I was shaking so hard I could barely stand still. Did Gayle and
Paige have any idea how dangerous Lark could be? Did we have any chance of
finding Gayle’s gun to save ourselves?

Gayle frowned, narrowing her eyes. “Lark, what is going
on?” she said, sticking out her hands, palms up. “I can’t believe
this. You’ve been keeping this secret all this time? Did you kill Sabrina and
put her in the freezer? Please tell me you didn’t.”

Lark squared her shoulders and gave Gayle a sharp look.
“No. I didn’t kill her. She died accidentally. But I did put her body in
the freezer.”

Paige’s breath was rasping in and out. “Why?” she
gasped. “Why would you do that to Sabrina?”

“It’s a long story,” Lark said. “You don’t
need to know the details.” She sounded like we were unruly children
questioning her authority.

Paige leaned toward her, eyes wide. “We have time,”
she said gently, her voice under control again. “And we’d like to hear
what happened.”

Lark shook her head. “No,” she said. “You need
to tell me something—how did you know to come here?”

Gayle took a step toward Lark, staring her down.
“Sabrina’s spirit in the apparition chamber told me to come to this
house,” she said, in a matter-of-fact tone. “So we came. And this is
what we found. How did you know we were here?” Either Gayle wasn’t nearly
as nervous as I was or she was great at appearing unbothered in the face of
fear.

“Stop right there, Gayle,” Lark said sharply,
motioning with her gun. “To answer your question, I didn’t know you were
here. Darby and I are leaving for Mexico tonight and I came over here to take
Sabrina’s body out to a remote area where I could bury her in the snow. But
then I saw your car outside. It’s hard to miss your car, Gayle, with that
SELL2U vanity plate you have.”

Watching Gayle and Paige confront Lark revived my courage.
Burning questions bubbled up as my fear began to dissolve. “Does this have
anything to do with the hospital’s investigation into deaths in the ICU?”
I asked. Then, before she could answer, the rest of my questions poured out.
“Was that what Sabrina meant in her thirty-day plan about you? Were you
euthanizing patients in the ICU? Did she know about it and threaten to report
you?”

Lark scowled. “I know that’s what you think, Cleo,”
she said. “The hospital told me that someone made a complaint about me,
someone said I push so hard for advance directives, that they were afraid I
might interfere with an elderly patient’s treatment. I knew it was you, Cleo.
You’ve been watching me like a hawk while I’ve been giving your grandmother
excellent care.”

“You did that, Cleo?” Paige sounded surprised.
“You complained to the hospital about Lark?”

“Yes,” I said. “But I had good reason to be
suspicious.”

“Really?” Lark said. “Really? If I wanted to
kill your grandmother, why wouldn’t I have done it by now?” She glared at
me. “And what about you, Cleo. Are you the perfect granddaughter? Do you
know how your grandmother is doing right now? Is she still alive?”

“
What
? What do
you mean?” I tried to hide my fear, but my voice cracked.

“You left her. She may have died while you were on your
way up here.”

I felt a wave of horror. “What are you saying, Lark? Do
you know something? Did you do something to Gramma? Give me my phone.” I
stepped toward her, hand outstretched.

Lark pointed her gun at my chest. She looked like she meant
business. “Back up, Cleo,” she barked.

“No. I need to call the hospital and check on her.”

Lark raised her gun and shot into the wall behind us. Paige
screamed as the blast echoed around the concrete room.

“Back up, Cleo or I’ll shoot you next. Don’t test
me.”

I stepped back. I could risk my life for Gramma, but I
couldn’t risk my baby’s life.

Paige was crying now, hugging her arms around herself.
“What has happened to you, Lark?” she sobbed. “Is Cleo right
about you killing patients in the ICU?”

Lark stared silently, standing straight and strong, her eyes
boring into us. Her brow was furrowed, her lips were tight, her chin jutted
out. Finally she spoke. “You make it sound so evil and dirty,” she
said. “But it wasn’t like that at all.”

She stopped again, looking past us this time. Her face took
on a superior glow. “I’m going to tell you the truth because I stand for
principle over the law. And so did Sabrina. Sabrina and I had a cause—a
cause we cared about as much as Hana and Diana care about their website that
punishes abusive men. Sabrina and I were Angels of Mercy.”