Nowhere Girl (12 page)

“Don't tell anyone, but you know you're my favorite,” I told him.

He answered by licking my cheek.

“You mean I've been ousted by a short, hairy man with a girl's name?”

Brady was standing at the barn door in jeans and a leather jacket, his hair messed from the wind.

“Hey,” I said. He gave me that half grin, and I wondered for the millionth time what it was like for Colette to slip in bed with him every night. “You're here. What a nice surprise.”

“I remember you said you come on Sundays.”

He started to walk toward Bliss, but I stopped him.

“Be careful,” I said. “He's not much of a people horse.”

But Brady was already in midstride, and by the time I got the words out, he was standing in front of him. Bliss took a tentative step forward and lowered his head. I watched as Brady scratched the horse behind his ear.

I stood there, stunned. I'd never seen Bliss act like that with a stranger. Brady must have seen the surprise on my face.

“Animals love me,” he said. “I'm the person dogs run to when they get off their leashes. My mom used to tell me I should have been a vet.”

“If you say so,” I said. “It took me a year of bringing him molasses squares every day before I could catch him in the paddock.” I dropped the hoof pick in my grooming bucket. I tried to pet his velvety nose, but he was more interested in Brady.

“He seems pretty happy to me.” Brady turned and grinned at me, and I had a vision of him at the park with dogs bringing him their Frisbees.

“He's plenty happy when he's with other horses.”

He was the horse we turned out with the babies when they were weaned from their mothers. They'd run around calling frantically for their dams until finally they'd give up and follow Bliss around the paddocks, nipping at his tail and trying to nurse. I'd never once seen him be rough with a youngster, but he could do without people.

“I need to pick his feet and brush him. Do you want to hang out for a minute?”

“Sure. I'll help if you want.” He pulled a curry mitt out of the grooming bucket and held it up. “I have no idea what to do with this, but I can make something up.”

“It's okay. I'll be done in a minute.” I took the mitt from him, unreasonably pissy that the horse who'd chased me out of his paddock for a year was warming up to someone he'd never seen before.

Brady watched me clean the mud and dirt out of Bliss's hooves and then paint the outside of his feet with peanut oil. When I'd told him where the barn was, I didn't think he'd ever drive all the way down here, but I was stupidly happy to see him. This was the most intimate we'd ever been. Far more intimate, even, than sitting in that huge, cold house that was supposed to be mine. I curried Bliss and brushed him, glancing at Brady every now and again. He was still sitting on my trunk like he wanted to say something but hadn't figured out how to spit it out.

I hooked a lead line to Bliss's halter. “You want to walk with us? I was about to graze him.”

He got up and followed me outside. “I need to talk to you about something,” he told me when we were in the open air.

“Okay.”

The grass was starting to turn green. From where Bliss was grazing, I could see the parking lot. A motorcycle was parked next to my car. I hated motorcycles. I hadn't known he had one, and I wondered if he and Gabby had ever talked about their shared interest. It surprised me I hadn't heard him pull in. He spoke as if he could read my thoughts.

“I cut the engine about a quarter mile up the road.” He reached up and pulled a willow switch off the branch above him. “I didn't want to scare the horses.”

“That was sweet of you.” I heard the flirt in my voice and tried to stamp it down.

Bliss dragged me toward the pond, where the spring grass was best, and Brady kept a step behind.

“This is serious,” Brady said suddenly.

I felt my neck go warm. “Okay,” I said.

But then he didn't say another word until we were down by the water.

“What's up?” I asked quietly.

“I have someone for you to interview.”

“Who?” I said it so loudly Bliss quit grazing and raised his head. I walked over and scratched his withers. It had been weeks and finally, finally, Brady had someone. Deanna would have to back off now that I'd scored an interview with a maximum-security inmate. “When can you get me in?”

“Slow down,” Brady said. “We need to talk about this first.”

“What do you mean?” I took a step toward him, and Brady glanced around as if someone might be hiding in the patch of unbloomed forsythia.

“Have you ever heard of the library murders?”

The air between us went still.

“Those seven girls in Philly?” I watched the wind make ripples on the pond and tried to remember what I knew about Larry Cauchek and the girls he'd murdered one after another in Philadelphia. “Is that who you want me to talk to? Larry Cauchek?”

“He has library privileges. Ironic, eh? The guy who killed seven girls and left each one on the front steps of a different library can check out books like the rest of us.” Brady peeled the leaves off his willow switch one by one.

“So you think he'd talk to a writer?”

He raised his eyes to me. They were so blue it was almost unreal. “He's checked out all your books, Cady. Twice.”

Suddenly, the sun felt hot, and the smell of hay and spring mud and manure were overpowering, nauseating.

“He's been reading me?”

I saw his Adam's apple move when he swallowed. “Yeah. He leaves sticky notes about your characters, the villains, all over his bunk.”

I ran through the plots in my books, the people who had been murdered, committed suicide, or died in terrible accidents, and the characters responsible for the deaths. “Who's his favorite?”

“Thomas Derringer,” we said at the same time.

Of course Larry Cauchek would like the murderer from
Empty Corridors
, who killed his first victim in an abandoned house.

“You don't have to do this,” he told me quietly.

“Oh, I'm doing it,” I said. Bliss pulled me to the paddock. I watched him touch noses with a yearling. “I have the chance to interview one of recent history's most prolific serial killers. If this gets leaked to the media, Hollerly House wouldn't even have to promote
Devils and Dust.
This would be all the press I'd need.”

“Since when did you become a fame junkie?” Brady sounded irritated. He was squinting, trying to figure me out.

“That's not why I'm doing it,” I told him. And I wished now that I was alone with the horses. That Brady had texted me this news. I felt macabre, sick for my preoccupation with the characters in my books.

“I want you to think about this before I arrange a meeting with Cauchek.” Brady's willow was free of leaves now, and he drew it between his fingers. “He's a dangerous guy. The worst.” His eyes were so intense it was hard to keep contact.

“Set up the interview.”

“Jesus.” He dropped the switch on the ground. “You're brave.”

I felt that familiar irritation rise in my chest. “It's hard to be afraid,” I said quietly, “when I've already survived the worst thing that could ever happen to me.” But I knew that night I would have a hard time sleeping, thinking about Larry Cauchek reading my novels. Thinking about him
identifying
with the villains.

*   *   *

When I pulled up to my house, three shiny SUVs were in my driveway, so I had to park on the street. As soon as I walked in the door, Bach flooded the room. A bottle of Boodles and a six-pack of tonic were sitting next to a cut-up lime on the kitchen island.

Greg was rummaging through the crisper drawer. “Where's that cheese?”

Through the archway to the living room, I saw three of his golf buddies sitting on our sofas. The one facing me waved.

“The cacky vacky polo or whatever you call it.”

“It's caciocavallo podolico, and you and those three assholes in there melted it and ate it with Fritos last week.”

“Would it have killed you to get some more?”

“That hunk of cheese cost as much as my first car.”

He closed the refrigerator a little too hard, and I heard the salad dressing bottles on the door rattle. “What's your point?”

His shirt was untucked, and his beeper was attached to his belt loop, which meant he'd probably been at his office. I wondered if Annika had been there and if he was screwing her. I hoped he was. Life with Greg was like swimming in the ocean with no sight of land. But it was too much effort to have
the talk
with him. To break down the breakdown of us.

“Can't you eat Cracker Barrel cheddar like the rest of us?” I asked.

“I
could.
But why would I?”

For a second, my vision went black, and all I could see was freedom, a life without Greg. A peace that didn't include a man who loved my money and a house that made me want to cry every morning. I could feel my pulse beating in my neck.

“Sorry,” I muttered. “I'll get some more next week.” Suddenly it was too much—pretending this life was okay with me. My parents were right. The shortest distance between two points was the truth. I rehearsed the words in my head.
I'm not happy. I've been thinking about someone else.
Would it matter what I said? The end result would be the same. I'd finally get my wish of being alone.

Greg watched me. The kitchen counter was between us, and I remembered when we were kids how Savannah and David used to chase each other around the island, sparring, trying to figure out which way the other one was going to run. He watched me, waiting for me to say something until one of his golf buddies called his name and he left me alone in the room.

 

CHAPTER

13

Chandler called Thursday afternoon and said that everyone had bailed on dinner, but if I'd already made it, I should come to his house for lunch on Friday. Odion was overseas on an import expedition, and Gabby had to do inventory at the library, which probably meant she and Duncan were going to have sex amid the periodicals after it closed. But I knew David wasn't busy. He was pissed that I talked to Emma, and now he was avoiding me.

While I drove, the car filled with the smell of bay leaves. Usually, Chandler's mother brought him food when Odion was away, but since his dad had died after a long bout with bone cancer, she was busy with the business. They owned White Glove Linens on Route 571 in Princeton. White Glove supplied and laundered tablecloths and napkins to almost every restaurant in the tristate area. Sotto Sopra hadn't been one of their biggest accounts, but it'd been one of their first. Savannah, David, Chandler, and I used to play hide-and-seek in the kitchen at the restaurant when he'd come with his dad every Monday to deliver a week's worth of clean cloths and pick up the dirty ones. And that's how we'd met Chandler, whom we loved right from the start.

His mother had been like me. She lost one pregnancy after another before Chandler finally came along, and his parents let him do pretty much anything he wanted, including starting his own brewing company in college, which was odd because he really didn't drink, but he liked science. He sold the beer at parties, which made him a kind of demigod and started him on the entrepreneurial track. When he graduated, he opened Chand Brewery in the old, run-down Victorian his parents bought for him in town. He kept it shabby for a while—orange carpets, linoleum flooring, and bad lighting. But when he and Odion got serious, they started a small import business in the garage and began working on the house almost every day. When they were done remodeling, the result was a cozy space I never wanted to leave.

Whenever I walked into the bottom floor, I got sort of happy to be there. Everything felt deliberate, from the wood floors with their worn patina to the gold gilded mirrors to the antique Louis IV couches in the waiting room. The wall was lined with pictures of Chandler, Odion, and Madelyn. The effect left me feeling cared for and loved.

“Cadence,” Chandler said, coming around his old mahogany desk. He and Patrick were the only people who ever called me by my real name, and he'd been doing it for so long I didn't mind. It was sweet and old-fashioned, like him.

“Thanks for having me.” I kissed him on the cheek. Chandler's bone structure was strong, almost Native American, and he had deep brown eyes that made me feel safe as hell.

He grinned. “Anything for my little sister.” He used to call Savannah and me his little sisters and kept right on doing it after she was gone.

“You skipped one.” I pointed to his oxford, where he'd missed a button.

“Oh,” he said. “Without Odion, I'm a mess.” I watched him rebutton. He couldn't match his socks, never mind an entire outfit; he was a horrible slob, and his jawline was rugged. “Do you mind eating here? Upstairs is messy.”

“I like it down here. It's comfy.” I set the chickpea dish I'd made the day before on his desk and sat in a squishy chair that sucked me in.

He reached into the bottom drawer of his cabinet and pulled out some paper plates, plastic forks, a stack of napkins, and two Dixie cups. A bottle of wine was on his desk.

“Lovely,” I said, indicating the bottle. “That's my favorite kind of dessert.”

“Italian.” Chandler smiled. “David and Gabby are going to wish they hadn't blown us off.”

“David's pissed and not talking to me, which is probably why he canceled last night.”

“Oh yeah?”

I couldn't tell from this noncommittal answer if David had talked to him about what was bugging him or not. Chandler gave us each a plate and uncorked the wine. I studied a photo of him and Odion with Madelyn on the desk. He poured the wine into our Dixie cups.