Kiss of Death (The Briar Creek Vampires, #1) by Jayme Morse & Jody Morse (17 page)

“Well, won’t I be getting the money from my
mom’s estate soon? That should help a little bit in terms of room
and board, right?”

“Your mom was in a lot of debt, sweetheart.
By the time it all gets paid, there won’t be much left.”

Lexi wondered what her mom had been in so
much debt over. Her mom had taken her on a few shopping sprees
recently, but was it enough for her to have to max out her credit
cards? Lexi knew that being a single parent wasn’t easy
financially, but her mom was a doctor. She had never complained
about her financial problems to Lexi, but she also probably hadn’t
wanted to worry her if she did have any.

“So, what are you saying? That I need to get
a job?” Lexi asked.

Violet nodded, monitoring Lexi’s face closely
for a reaction.

“Whatever. It’s not like my life can get much
worse than it is right now,” Lexi said.

“What do you mean your life can’t get much
worse? You have met a great guy! That’s something to be proud
of.”

Lexi sighed. “No one has ever said that it
would turn into a long-term relationship,” she said, adding, “or
even a relationship for that matter. He’s nice enough, but…”

“But what, Lexi? Don’t tell me that you’re
still hung up on Gabe! He’s not good for you.”

“So you keep telling me,” Lexi said, jumping
up from her seat at the kitchen table and noisily tossing her bowl
into the kitchen sink.

When Lexi was upstairs, she searched for
something to wear. She slipped into a pair of dark wash skinny
jeans, a blue halter top and white studded flip flops. Reaching for
her Coach bag, she unzipped it and looked for the note card that
she knew she had stuffed inside. Sure enough, the card, which was
crumpled up, was there, right next to her sunglasses, keys, and
wallet. Unfolding the card, Lexi looked at the address that she had
written in bubbly handwriting a few days ago. “125 Birch Street,”
she read out loud. She wasn’t sure where 125 Birch Street was, but
she was going to find out.

****

Chapter 17

Lexi nervously tapped her flip flop against
the wooden planks as she waited on the front step, trying to figure
out what she was going to say to the person who would open the
front door. She had known that she would come here eventually, but
had yet to figure out what she was going to say once it actually
happened. Crossing her fingers, she hoped that the right person
would answer the door so that it wouldn’t seem so strange.

Listening, Lexi did not hear anyone moving
closer to the door. After a few moments, she assumed that no one
was home. Just as Lexi was about to turn and walk away, the front
door creaked open and a pair of hazel eyes stared back at her.

“Lexi,” Mary-Kate said, a warm smile crossing
her face. “It is Lexi, right? I don’t think you ever told me your
name, but my dad mentioned it.”

Lexi nodded. “Yes, it’s Lexi. I hope you
didn’t mind that I stopped by. My aunt told me where you live,” she
lied. She didn’t want Mary-Kate to think she was a total creeper
for looking through the phone book to find her address.

“Of course I don’t mind! Like I told you, I’m
always here if you need to talk…which I’m guessing might be now?”
Mary-Kate asked, stepping back to let Lexi in. Lexi glanced around
at the large foyer. The walls were lined with mirrors, which led to
the gorgeous staircase that looked like it belonged in an old
romantic movie.

Following her into the mint green, spacious
living room, Lexi nodded. “Yeah, I do. I’m just going through a
really hard time right now. I have no friends in Briar Creek and I
don’t think anyone else really knows what it’s like to lose someone
they really love.”

“And you think that I understand because I
lost Austin,” Mary-Kate concluded. Lexi nodded in return.

Mary-Kate paced back and forth, glancing out
the large picture window. When she turned back to Lexi, her eyes
looked hollow. She no longer looked like the same girl that had
taken topless pictures blowing a sinful kiss at Austin not long
ago. She looked fragile and incomplete, as if a part of her had
died with Austin. Lexi felt sorry for her.

“I miss Austin,” Mary-Kate said softly, her
bottom lip trembling. “They say that time is enough to heal
anything, but I don’t believe it. I don’t think I’ll ever stop
feeling sad about Austin or that you’ll stop feeling sad about your
mom. I think that, in time, we’ll just find a way to pretend we’re
not as sad.” Mary-Kate was probably right. Just thinking about
moving on from her mom’s death made Lexi’s heart feel like it was
going to crumble into pieces.

Remembering that the reason she had come to
visit Mary-Kate wasn’t so that she could talk about her mom, Lexi
tried to pull herself together. “It’s strange, but I don’t know
much about Austin,” Lexi said. “It would be nice if you could tell
me about him.”

Smiling, Mary-Kate twirled a brown ringlet
around a perfectly manicured finger. “Are you sure? Most people get
sick of me talking about him.”

“I’m positive,” Lexi replied, hoping that
Mary-Kate would tell her something – anything – that would lead her
in the right direction.

“I met Austin when we started middle school.
We went to different elementary schools,” she began. “It’s kind of
crazy but I believe that it was love at first sight for me. Austin
would walk into the darkest room and light it up completely. He was
the class clown. That ended up getting him in a lot of trouble in
high school.”

“What type of trouble?” Lexi interrupted.

“Oh, you know, high school football player
trouble,” Mary-Kate said, giggling. “He would pick on the dorky
kids and if it was in front of a teacher that didn’t care if the
Briar Creek Cougars won, they would give him detention.”

So Austin
had
made enemies with some
of the kids at school, Lexi thought, not that she was surprised.
From the look of his Facebook profile, he was exactly the type of
person she pictured who would be too stuck up to be friends with
anyone that wasn’t a football player or cheerleader. Lexi wondered
if maybe one of the dorky kids who Austin had picked on may have
wanted to get revenge on him.

“Austin was also really stubborn,” Mary-Kate
went on. “For the longest time, he pretended that he wasn’t
interested in me at all. About a year ago, he admitted that he had
feelings from the very beginning though. It still upsets me that he
waited so long to give us a chance.”

Lexi nodded sympathetically, encouraging her
to continue talking. She truly did feel sorry for her.

“Our relationship wasn’t perfect, even though
everyone thinks it was. They all think ‘What could possibly go
wrong between the mayor’s daughter and the star football player?’ A
lot of things went wrong between us though…” she said, trailing
off. The distant look in her eyes let Lexi know that she was
getting lost in her own memories. It was the same look that Lexi
probably got when she thought about her mom.

Lexi wondered if their problems had anything
to do with why Mary-Kate had been cheating on Austin with Dan. Lexi
didn’t think it was ever okay to cheat, but maybe Mary-Kate had
actually had a good reason to do it. Maybe Austin had actually
driven her to do it, and she wasn’t just a slut after all.

“What type of problems did you have?” Lexi
asked after Mary-Kate had gone silent for a few minutes. Lexi hoped
that she didn’t seem too nosey, but the look on Mary-Kate’s face
told her that she didn’t mind the question.

“Well, first, there was the drinking,”
Mary-Kate said, adding, “and then there was the car accident. When
Austin killed the guy in the other car, something inside of him
snapped. It was like he was a completely different person and he
started pushing everyone away…including me.”

“I didn’t know that someone died in the
accident,” Lexi said softly. She wondered if someone who knew the
guy in the other car had been torn up enough about it to seek
revenge on Austin.

“Yeah, it was devastating. I tried to be
there for him, but it was like he didn’t even want me around,”
Mary-Kate said. “Anyway, after that, Austin got really moody. He
would snap at me for the smallest things. He started getting into
fights with other people too. Then, he got into a fight with his
neighbor, Gabe. That’s when things really got worse between
us.”

“He did? What did they fight about?” Lexi
asked, completely shocked that Gabe hadn’t told her about this
earlier.

“Whatever it was about was over something
serious enough for Austin to refuse to tell me,” Mary-Kate said,
shrugging her shoulders. “I know that after that, his parents got a
lot stricter with him. They wouldn’t let him go out as much
anymore, which meant that he and I didn’t see each other that
often. It really took a toll on our relationship.”

Lexi realized that Austin and Gabe fighting
probably had something to do with why Violet and Tommy were so
against him. Maybe they knew what the fight was over, which made
things worse? It sounded pretty serious for Austin to not even tell
Mary-Kate what had happened. Lexi wondered if she could trick Gabe
into telling her what he and Austin had fought about, without
letting him know that she had visited Mary-Kate.

“Then there was the cheating,” Mary-Kate
said, an angry tone in her voice. “I tried to ignore it because I
didn’t want to lose him completely, but it was really hard.”

“Who did he cheat on you with?” Lexi asked, a
little bit surprised to hear that Mary-Kate wasn’t the only one who
had been cheating. It was also very believable, especially
considering the cocky vibes that Austin gave off in the pictures
she had seen of him. Maybe that was why Austin didn’t care that
Mary-Kate had cheated on him.

“Mrs. Jensen,” Mary-Kate said. “She’s our
high school English teacher. Austin was having trouble in her class
and she wasn’t like the other teachers, who all gave him passing
grades so he could keep playing football. Austin said that Mrs.
Jensen told him that if he agreed to have sex with her, she would
give him an ‘A.’ The problem is that he continued to have sex with
her, even once grades were in.”

“Mrs. Jensen? So, she’s married?” Lexi asked.
Mary-Kate gave her a funny look.

“Yeah,” she laughed. “Have you never heard of
someone cheating on her husband?”

Lexi’s cheeks grew hot, embarrassed that
Mary-Kate was implying that she was a prude.

“Of course I’ve heard of it. But Austin
just…didn’t care? He didn’t mind that he may have been wrecking a
marriage?”

“Austin didn’t care about much,” Mary-Kate
said quietly. “Football was all that really mattered to him.” Lexi
felt slightly bad for Mary-Kate, but she had also come to a
realization. Of all the suspects that Mary-Kate had just made her
think of (like the dorky kids Austin had made fun of and people who
knew the guy he had killed in the car accident), Mrs. Jensen’s
husband stood out the most.

If he had found out that Austin had been
having an affair with his wife, he may have snapped – and Lexi had
learned in her high school law class that the murder would only be
punishable as a crime of passion in a court of law. Chances are Mr.
Jensen would get off if he was ever found guilty.

“Do you know where Austin was the night he
died?” Lexi asked. She could have sworn that she saw Mary-Kate stop
breathing as her skin turned a ghostly shade of white.

“No,” she answered, her chin twitching. “I
don’t know where he was.”

“Oh, okay. My aunt said that he was supposed
to be meeting you that night,” Lexi lied again.

“Well, he was. He just never showed up. I
called him and never got an answer, so I ended up going to bed
early that night. The next morning, his mom called me to tell me
that he was dead,” Mary-Kate said, her eyes glazing over.

“I’m sorry,” Lexi said. “If you want to stop
talking about this, we can.”

“No, it’s fine. It’s good for me to talk
about it. My dad’s sick of hearing about it and so are all of my
friends. Everyone thinks that I need to just move on already, but
it’s not that easy.”

“Dan mentioned that you were seeing Dave,”
Lexi lied, yet again. She hoped that Mary-Kate never found out that
she had lied to her three times so far, but it was really the only
way for her to find out the answers that she was looking for.

“Dan needs to learn how to keep his mouth
shut,” Mary-Kate muttered, running a small hand through her
chocolate brown hair. “I’m not seeing Dave. We’re just friends.”
Friends with benefits, Lexi thought to herself. She decided, on
second thought, that she wasn’t going to pass judgment. So what if
Mary-Kate and Dave wanted to have fun? On the other hand, Lexi
reminded herself that this type of behavior wasn’t exactly
characteristic of someone who was supposedly mourning the loss of
her dead boyfriend.

“Did you get along with my aunt?” Lexi asked,
hoping that Mary-Kate didn’t think it was weird that she was asking
her this type of question.

“She was nice to me if that’s what you’re
asking,” Mary-Kate said. “I wouldn’t go as far as to say that I
liked her though. I was civil with her because I knew that
otherwise, she wouldn’t let me see Austin.”

“How do you know that?” Lexi questioned.
Mary-Kate shrugged.

“Austin had other girlfriends before me. When
his mom didn’t like them, he always ended up breaking up with them
– even if he was really into them. I just always figured that it
was Violet forcing him to end the relationships.”

“Did Austin date a lot of people?” Lexi
asked.

“He dated enough for me to question how
faithful he was being to me,” Mary-Kate said, looking down at her
pedicured toenails.

“Do you think he cheated on you with anyone
besides Mrs. Jensen?” Lexi questioned, feeling slightly bad about
asking so many personal questions, but also sensing that Mary-Kate
actually wanted to talk about it. Maybe it was therapeutic for
her?