Save Me: A dark romantic thriller (Novel) (25 page)

Snug in a toasty blanket, the baby lay on Claire’s lap quietly drinking formula. This was quite a relief, considering that Kimberly, since daybreak, had been sobbing and fussing even more than she had yesterday.

Claire was convinced that the baby was upset because of her mother’s departure. If for an extended period Kimberly did not get to see Ashley, she would become irritable.

“Wait a minute,” Claire uttered. “Are you sure it’s twenty-four hours? Or do you have to wait forty-eight hours, before the police will do something?”

“I don‘t know,” Rachel replied, now standing up. She stretched her stiff back, and then went to peek out the front door, hoping to see Ashley’s Toyota pull up. “I’m not an expert on police procedure. However, I always thought that once a person has been missing for a day, most municipalities will at least allow you to file a report.”

For the first time in perhaps a decade, Claire had gone two consecutive days without wearing makeup. Presently her face was intensely pale, and heavy black circles encased her eyes.

“Well,” she said, “whatever the time frame is, I think I’m going to wait.”

“You’re going to wait!” Rachel threw her arms up into the air. “For how long, Claire? Until your blood pressure soars so high you have a heart attack?”

“Look Rachel, I don’t want to argue with you. I’m just confused.”

“You should be.”

Claire glanced down and saw that some of the baby formula had dripped onto her pink, Gloria Vanderbilt jogging suit. Using a wet napkin, she wiped the dribble clean.

“In her note, Ashley specified that she might be gone for a couple of weeks. It’s not as if she said she was never coming back. My theory is because of what happened with her and Troy; she wanted to get away for a while, to sort out her emotions.”

In a dramatic display of hostility, Rachel slammed her teacup into its saucer. The hot cup and the spoon clanked explosively.

“If Ashley was my daughter, I’d want to find her as soon as possible.”

“And why is that?” Claire asked, even though she already knew the answer.

“So I could give her a serious piece of my mind, that‘s why. What normal parent would split like that, without taking their kid? You’re not this child’s caretaker!”

“Rachel, would you please lower your voice. I don’t want you shouting like this in front of my granddaughter. Show some respect. I don‘t want the neighbors to hear what you‘re saying either. Jeez!”

Rachel, dressed in a blouse and skirt from Kohl’s, began to pace around the room.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I can’t help but be upset. I’m so disgusted by what your daughter has been putting you through. Yeah, granted, lately, Ashley has shaped up her act quite a bit. I’ll give her that. But this stunt she pulled now, is totally inexcusable!”

“Stop getting so riled up,” Claire urged, scowling. “I’m telling you, if you don’t lower your voice, you’re going to scare the baby. It took me long enough to get Kimberly to stop crying. I don‘t need you starting her up again.”

“Yeah. Sure Claire.” Rachel said, seething. “I’ll lower my voice. If it’s not about Ashley, it’s about the baby. Always about the baby.”

Switching the bottle of formula to her other hand, Claire asked, “What‘s that supposed to mean?”

“It‘s like I don‘t even know you anymore. Ever since this kid was born, that’s all you ever think about . . . The baby this. The baby that. And like I said, if it’s not about Kimberly, then it’s about Ashley.”

“What are you saying, Rachel, you don’t want to be my friend anymore?”

If that turned out to be the case, Claire would be fraught with melancholy. Rachel, for such a long time, had always had her back.

“No. That’s not what I’m saying.” Rachel stamped her foot and growled. “We’ll always be friends. I’m just fed up with your daughter. I’m so tired of this crap!”

“Okay,” Claire responded compassionately. “I can understand where you’re coming from. Except why do you have to bring the baby into this?”

“Because. Don’t you get it? Ashley should be the one taking care of Kimberly. Not you!”

“She does take care of her.”

“Really?” Rachel chuckled scornfully. “You call her latest disappearing act taking care of her child? Huh! I beg to differ. What Ashley is doing is called being selfish. And a hundred bucks says wherever she is, she’s probably back on the booze. Back on it heavily.”

Perturbed, Claire thought about the Smirnoff vodka that she had found in Ashley‘s studio.

“I doubt it,” she lied, not willing to discus her daughter‘s drinking problem. “Ashley took her easel with her and most of her canvases. So like Troy said, I think wherever she went, probably to a hotel, she’s concentrating on her art.”

Earlier that morning, Eve had left a message on Claire’s answering machine, stating that she and the curator from the art gallery in Trenton, would likely stop by over the weekend to critique Ashley‘s work.

“Need I remind you,” Rachel said, shaking her finger critically, “that some of your daughter’s finest artwork came at a time when she was practically drinking from sun up until sundown? I hate to say it; I think the booze actually helps her to be more creative. Yet that‘s about the only thing it helps. The rest of her judgment is way off the map.”

“Okay. Then for argument sake, Rach, let’s say Ashley is back on the booze: would it have been a smarter idea for her to have taken Kimberly with her? Or do you think she did the right thing by leaving the baby here with me, with someone who is sober?”

Stubbornly, Rachel frowned, sipped her tea.

“Do you have anymore Sweet’ N Low?” she asked. “My tea tastes somewhat bland.”

“First answer the question.”

“No Claire!” Rachel refused to sit back down. She kept edging closer to the door. “I’m finished talking about this. You know where I stand on the issue. So either notify the police or shut up! Because if I have to listen to one more word about your crazy daughter, I’m out of here.”

That did it
!

Claire could no longer sit here impassively, and listen to her friend act like a complete hypocrite.

“Rachel, what do you expect me to do, tell Ashley, when I do finally hear from her, that I’ve given up on her? That she’d better find somewhere else to live? And that wherever the hell she’s planning on going, she’d better take the baby with her, because I‘m no one‘s caretaker, and that if she can‘t manage to-”

“Yes!” Rachel interrupted defiantly. “That’s exactly what I think you should say to her. You need to be tough. With all that life insurance money she has, and the money she receives each month from Peter‘s parents, she can afford to be on her own.”

“Is that a fact?”

“Absolutely. Plus, now she’s also earning relatively steady profit selling her paintings. Therefore, there’s no reason for her to be here anymore. She certainly isn’t broke.”

Becoming deeply resentful, Claire reached toward the coffee table for a magazine. “For chrissakes, Rachel, my daughter lost her husband and was raped! Two people jumped her in the dark and nearly murdered her. Do you really think Ashley is supposed to get over those traumatic events in the course of a single year?”

“No Claire, I don’t. But she has to want to help herself. It’s as simple as that. And if she doesn’t want to help herself, then there’s really nothing you or anyone else can do about it . . . Ashley’s not a kid anymore, she’s a grown woman.”

Thinking it best to remove the baby from this verbal war zone, Claire put Kimberly upstairs.

“If your precious daughter,” she said to Rachel when she returned, “had lost her husband, then a couple of months later, got raped, while pregnant no less, I guarantee you she would have wound up just as emotionally messed up as Ashley. So don’t stand there, Rachel, and act as if your offspring is a model of perfection. I care about my daughter, the same way you care about your daughter. That means no matter what Ashley does, even when she pulls outrageous stunts like this, I have to stand by her. No matter what!”

Contemptuously, Rachel shook her head.

“Okay. Then lets drive down to the police station,” she suggested. “We can use my car. You can’t stand by her if you don’t know where she is.”

“I said I’m going to wait. At least one more day.”

“You really think she’s going to call?”

“She will,” Claire insisted, blindly flipping through her boring magazine. “I know she will. As soon as she comes to her senses.”

“And what if she doesn’t? What if Ashley is planning to buy another gun?”

“Don’t even say that, Rachel! If you’re going to say things like that, then you might as well leave!”

Humbled, Rachel sat back down. “I’m just saying that could be what she’s thinking. She really thought that guy Troy was in love with her.”

“He still is in love with her,” Claire quickly pointed out. “He just made a mistake. When I went and spoke to him the other day, I could tell he was just as brokenhearted as Ashley. Of course, being a man, he wasn’t going to come out and admit it. Though I could definitely tell, he was upset. I could hear it in his voice.”

While Rachel went into the kitchen to sweeten her tea, Claire thought about the possible repercussions of getting the police involved.

What if the state found Ashley to be an unfit mother?

In order to keep the baby, Claire might have to become Kimberly’s legal guardian. Realizing this gave her more reason to postpone driving down to headquarters. What is more, for all Claire knew, perhaps Ashley, tomorrow, was still planning to attend her therapy session.

Once Caitlyn and Brent had gone home, Ashley decided to go in and have lunch.

Then, for a few hours, she continued to paint.

In the back of her mind, she knew there was something she was supposed to do. Yet, because of combining the morphine with white wine, she could not recall what that was.

It wasn’t food shopping: Ashley had already taken care of that earlier. She had also done a big load of laundry, and had ironed most of the clothes that had been wrinkled from being in her suitcases.

In addition, Ashley had thoroughly mopped the kitchen and bathroom floor with Pine-Sol, not that they needed it. But she did not want to risk having other people’s germs in an environment where she now planned to inhabit. Ashley had no idea what type of people had rented the cottage before her.

Now, as she put her pallet, painting knife, and brush down, Ashley again reached for her wine goblet.

Then she strolled down toward the purple ocean, taking the glass with her.

The other night, when the power had gone out, Ashley had taken a small amount of morphine, which had certainly mellowed her out. Today however, she had upped the dosage substantially.

Presently, the world seemed remarkably peaceful and her mind felt free of pressure. Watching a boat pass lazily along the sun-soaked horizon, Ashley suddenly remembered what she was supposed to do, phone her mother.

I might as well do it now
, she told herself grudgingly.
And get it over with
.

On the way back to the cottage, she observed, down the beach a ways, Blake Cromwell. He and his wife were taking a walk, holding hands.

The property owner smiled and waved. Ashley did the same.

Once inside the rental, she immediately locked both the back door and the front. This was done out of paranoia. If Blake Cromwell happened to come back, Ashley was intending to act as though she wasn‘t here.

If Blake saw Ashley in this drugged-out condition, she feared that he might change his mind, and not to allow her to rent.

If that were to happen, Ashley did not know where she would go.

While Blake Cromwell and his wife Lavern indulged in their late afternoon stroll along the beach, they were tossing breadcrumbs to the energetic flock of sea gulls, which were circling all around them.

Weather pending, this was something the Cromwell’s did each day.

“So what’s the story with our new tenant?” Lavern asked, watching her husband wave to Ashley. “I like the girl’s beret. I haven’t worn a hat like that in forty years.”

“I don’t really know what her story is,” Blake responded, throwing another handful of crumbs to the shouting gulls.

“Did you check her references?”

“No. She was in such a hurry to get in the place; I didn’t think to do that.”

“Blake!” Lavern reprimanded, lightly swatting her husband on the shoulder. “You were supposed to. You know how artists are. They can be very irresponsible. If this new tenant ruins the floor, I’ll have your head.”

“She won’t ruin it.”

“What makes you so sure of that?”

“Because she specifically told me she’ll put a drop cloth down.”

“Did you actually see this drop cloth?”

“Yes. I helped her drag it out of her trunk. For Pete’s sake, Lavern, don’t get into an uproar. This girl seems like an honest person. If she says she’ll put a drop cloth down, then I believe she will. She wouldn’t have brought it with her if she wasn’t planning to use it.”

Lavern Cromwell nodded, accepted the explanation. “And this young lady is she by herself?”

Blake shrugged. “She seems to be. She didn’t mention a husband or boyfriend. All I really know about her is she said she used to live down near Atlantic City.”

“Whereabouts?”

“Some small town called Wichita. Ever hear of it?”

Lavern had to ponder the question. “I think so. If I’m not mistaken, I think Wichita is in Burlington County.”

“Well, anyway,” Blake added, “this Ashley Ferguson- that’s her name- isn’t sure how long she’ll be staying. So far, she paid me for two weeks rent.”

“Two weeks! That‘s it?” Stunned, Lavern again bopped her husband on the arm. “Blake, what do you think we’re running here, a Bed & Breakfast? I want you to go back over there immediately and tell her, before she gets settled in, that we require, in advance, the full month’s rent and one month‘s security.”