The Off Season (12 page)

Or maybe he’d spent too many years policing shoebies at the shore.

But regardless of the stereotypes, he knew one thing for certain: Doug Paxton’s first wife, Evelyn, had come a long way since leaving this narrow street. When he’d looked up her home address in Pittsburgh, he’d seen that the divorcée was living in an attractive, brick two-story in a decidedly upscale East Side neighborhood. A quick check of the
Post-Gazette
’s online archives told him she’d remained active on the social scene, too—her fashionably thin, impeccably dressed figure photographed at galas benefiting special-needs kids.

Shutting the Charger’s door behind him, Harris hit the alarm button and headed for the front door. As he started up the concrete steps, a brown-eyed woman whose smooth face belied her age opened the front door and stood watching through the glass storm door, her arms folded over her chest. Her sweater, boots, and leggings all looked expensive, but the stress in her eyes shone through her flawless makeup.

He spread out his badge wallet, letting her see his identification.

Opening the storm door, she said, “Wait. That’s a New Jersey ID, isn’t it?”

“Yes, ma’am. I’m Chief of Police Harris Bowers, Seaside Creek, New Jersey. Are you Evelyn Davis?” he asked, wanting to gauge her reaction to his use of her maiden name.

“It’s Paxton.” She flipped back her chic, highlighted hair, sounding more confused than irritated as she claimed her married name. Her face, however, barely moved at all, frozen in place by some cosmetic treatment. “Is this—is this about my daughter? Has she been—”

When she cut herself off, he cocked his head. “Go on. You were going to ask me something?”

She bit her lower lip, scraping off her lipstick. “Please come in. We’re letting out the heat. My mother would—she was always scolding me about it.”

She ushered him in past a stairway and then hurried him through a room containing an empty hospital bed—stripped of linens—a storage buffet, and a long table pushed to one side. On both the buffet top and the table, there were baskets containing prescription medication bottles of all sizes, along with various personal items, from lip balm and tissues to what looked like a well-worn Bible.

“I’m sorry to have to take you through here,” she said. “This house’s layout is—this is normally the dining room, but—but—” Pausing in one of a pair of doorways, she covered her mouth with a hand, her eyes filling with tears.

Reaching for a nearby box of tissues, he offered them to her. “I was sorry to hear about your mother’s illness. Has she . . . ?”

She nodded, her eyes expressing her sorrow despite her weirdly still face. “Last night, yes. It was a blessing, really. Or so I keep telling myself.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, meaning it, because whatever grudge this woman might hold against Christina, losing a parent was never easy.

She nodded. “But there are so many things to be done. The medical-equipment people are already—they insisted on coming for the bed and her oxygen this morning. And I have to go—I have an appointment at the funeral home a little later. I need to choose her clothes and—I thought I was prepared for this. I thought—”

“Is someone with you?” he asked, remembering what Christina had told him about the pretty nineteen-year-old daughter. The one who couldn’t be left on her own in Pittsburgh. “Is Ashley here?”

She blinked when he said the name. “Actually, I’m not—let me get her. Why don’t you have a seat in here.”

As she darted through a door leading into a small linoleum-floored kitchen, he headed where she’d indicated, into a dark, paneled living room with plush, green carpeting and a seventies-style sofa set that he imagined would be donated to charity any day now. He remained standing, checking his phone for messages, until she returned a short time later, a smile stretched too thin over her face. “I should’ve known. She was out cold on the pullout in the basement. She’ll be up in a few minutes.”

“But you weren’t sure of it, were you?” he asked, feeling bad about pressing the woman on a day like this, but needing to get to the point quickly. “You thought she might’ve been out, and over on my side of the bridge, maybe? She been borrowing the car lately, maybe heading over to visit her stepmother?”

Evelyn Paxton stiffened. “Stepmother? What on earth? You don’t mean that woman, do you? My husband’s—”

“Your ex-husband’s second wife, Christina.”

“She’s hardly their stepmother. She barely knows the children, probably wouldn’t recognize them if she tripped over them by now. My husband almost always flew to Pittsburgh to make his visitations. I insisted on it, for our Ashley’s sake. She doesn’t handle change well. The divorce was a terrible blow to her.”

Harris wondered whether that was true. Or whether the woman who’d never remarried, who continued to use her ex’s name and had now twice referred to him as her husband was the person who had the issue with change. Deciding to throw a little more fuel on the fire, he added, “Maybe your daughter was hoping to get to know her little sister.”

Bristling, Evelyn clenched her hands until the knuckles whitened. “
That child
is not my children’s sister, and whatever that woman’s saying to get you to harass my boy and distract him from his studies—he told me all about it last night when I called about his grandmother.”

“I don’t believe anyone’s harassing your family, ma’am. We’re just attempting to nail down a few details so we can put our investigation to bed.”

Again, she stiffened, a glimmer of fear flashing over her face before she locked down her expression. “What kind of investigation?”

“Just a little vandalism.” He tried out a dismissive snort, thinking she might be more forthcoming if she imagined he was just going through the motions. “Well, that and some harmless prank with the baby monitor in her kid’s room.”

“But you said
Chief
Bowers, didn’t you? Your department sends the police chief for some minor little nothing?”

He dredged up a sheepish smile. “You haven’t been to Seaside Creek, ma’am, have you? Little shore town, practically deserted this time of year, so we don’t have much else to worry over—especially when some rich lady doctor starts squawking.” Laying on another
aw shucks
shrug, he added, “You know how that type can be, ordering us around like we work for her.”

She rolled her eyes. “I can well imagine. And probably crying over how my family
stuck it to her
after Doug’s death, when she only had herself to blame.”

“Herself to blame?” asked Harris, his sympathy for the woman shrinking by the second. “I’m not sure I follow you.”

“If she’d watched his diet and kept up with his medical appointments the way I did, he could have lived a long life.”

“So you’re thinking—you’re saying you believe Dr. Paxton’s responsible for her husband’s heart attack?”

“Not responsible. Of course not. But the woman
is
supposedly a doctor. And she knew his family history. If she hadn’t stressed him by insisting on having a child of her own—”

“Who cut into your own son’s and daughter’s inheritance, I imagine?”

Her pointed chin rose and her nostrils flared, her body shaking as she spat out, “She was never the maternal type. Anyone could see it. She only had that child to give her
a way to get her hooks into that money until the girl comes of age.”

“So what about your kids? Do they handle their own inheritance? Or do you help with—”

“Of course they don’t. None of the three will see a dime until they’re thirty, according to my husband’s will.”

“Working in a trust department, I guess you’d know a lot more than I would about such matters.” Such as how to work things so she’d earn a sizable chunk of change each year she spent managing what he suspected would be millions.

“So you’re implying, what? That I would indulge in some sort of low-rent harassment to get back at a woman I haven’t spared a thought to in months? Because it’s
over
. She’s already signed the paperwork, and the estate will settle in a few weeks. She gave in.”

“Gave in to your demands, you mean?” Harris asked, wondering whether it was possible that the damage to the Mercedes and the voice on the monitor weren’t the first acts of intimidation that had been directed toward Christina.
But why wouldn’t she admit it, if there’ve been previous incidents? Is she that afraid?

“She folded because she
knows
,” Evelyn said, whatever control she’d managed crashing down around her as tears streamed down her frozen face. “She absolutely knows that
I
should’ve been the one by his side until the end. And he should’ve been right here with me now, seeing me through last night, through all of this, the way I saw him through when first his mother and then his dad—when they—”

“Mom?” came a soft voice from behind him. “Are you all right?”

Turning, Harris saw a young woman hurrying toward them, a bare knee poking through a pair of artfully—expensively—worn jeans that fit her like a glove. Unlike her mother, she looked as if she’d just awakened, her tousled dark-brown hair highlighted with hot-pink and electric-blue streaks, and her wide-set eyes devoid of makeup. Despite the rumpled look, with one naked shoulder jutting from the oversize sweatshirt she wore, the combination of a fresh face and nubile body confirmed Christina’s claim that her mom had to beat back the boys with a stick just to get her through high school. Especially if the girl’s learning problems made her especially vulnerable to such attention.

While her mother dropped, weeping, to the sofa, he turned his attention to the young woman now standing beside her, flashing his badge briefly. “Your mother was just worried. Worried about you. I gather you went out last night.”

“Aw, yeah. I—” Ashley said, her attention flitting between Harris and her sobbing mother. Stretching out her hand, she rubbed the older woman’s back, her bright-blue nails chipped. “I didn’t mean to scare her. I just borrowed Mom’s car, like I do all the time—”

“To meet up with yet another horrible boy, I imagine,” her mother cut in, her voice an angry shriek, “while I was left here to deal with all this.” She flung a gesture in the direction of the room containing the empty hospital bed.

“I was seeing
my friends
from the coffee place, that’s all,” Ashley corrected her, with an air of patience suggesting she routinely dealt with such overwrought outbursts. So routinely that she’d learned not to fuel the fire by getting emotional herself.

Jerking away from her daughter’s hand, Evelyn hunched forward to hide her face as she wept.

“I had to. It was—last night was so intense, you know?” Lowering her voice to a whisper, Ashley confided to Harris, “I’ve never seen anybody dead like that. Especially my own grandma.”

He reminded himself that Christina had mentioned the girl having learning issues, though to him, Ashley sounded no different from any of a thousand teenagers he’d dealt with. “So who was it you went to see?” he asked.

“Listen,” she said, “I’m sorry if my mom called to report me missing. She kind of overreacts sometimes, especially when she’s upset. But if she’d bothered to check just down the street”—Ashley hooked a thumb in that general direction—”or look down in the basement, she’d have seen that I’ve been back since, gosh, I guess it would’ve been around twelve thirty.”

“Twelve thirty?” he repeated, not correcting the girl’s misapprehension about the purpose of his visit.

She shrugged. “Okay, maybe more like two. There’s this twenty-four-hour Dunkins where we all go after our regular Starbucks closes.”

That must be one caffeinated bunch, he thought, but he’d rather see nineteen-year-olds hanging around cafés than sneaking into bars like he had around that age. “So you’ve made some new friends, just since you’ve been in Philadelphia?”

“Sure,” she told him. “It’s—I know this hospice stuff might sound, like, superdramatic. But a lot of it involves waiting around while someone else makes gross smells and noises in her sleep. And it took
forever
.”

Her mother’s head jerked up, her red-rimmed eyes wounded. “I’m sorry if my mother’s
dying
inconvenienced you.”

“Mom, I didn’t mean it like that. Sorry,” the girl said, but it was too late. Her mother blasted to her feet and rushed out of the room.

Ashley sighed. “Sorry about that. She’s not normally so—you know.”

“Except about your father’s widow, you mean?”

Ashley stilled, her pretty face freezing in a way that looked more like her mother’s. “Christina?” she said. “Wait—I thought you were here because my mom reported me gone.”

“You might not’ve noticed on my ID, but I’m from Seaside Creek, New Jersey. I’m the chief of police there.”

She shook her head. “Wait. That’s where—Christina’s living there now, isn’t she? But why would she—”

“There’s been some harassment. Vandalism, stuff like that. We’re looking to see if there could be some connection to—”

“You aren’t thinking that my
mom
would—oh my God. Don’t be ridiculous. She might sue somebody, but she’d never stoop to anything illegal.”

“But it is true, isn’t it, that your mother doesn’t like Christina?”

“Well, yeah. But it’s not like she’s ever spent more than five minutes with her, face-to-face—and she hasn’t mentioned her in, like, months.”

“But she can’t accept it, can she,” he asked, “that your father was able to move on when she couldn’t? That he’s really gone now, and she’ll never get another chance to make things right with him?”

Ashley shrugged. “Everybody has their weak points, I guess. Maybe my mom’s is holding too tight on to the people that she loves.”

“That could be,” Harris said, thinking it was possible that the opposite might be true. That Evelyn Davis Paxton’s greatest issue might be holding too firmly not to love, but to hate . . . hate for the woman who’d replaced her . . . the woman she blamed for her ex-husband’s death.

CHAPTER TEN

Initially, he’d planned to wrap the knife in burlap and dump it off one of the half dozen or so bridges around the community. Maybe some warm day next summer, the thing would come up in a crab trap, but by then it would be so eaten up with rust from the briny water, no one would think a thing about it.

Then it came to him that that was stupid. It wasn’t like a gun, where some cop could use ballistics to match it to the carvings he’d done. Maybe if he’d jammed it into the bitch’s back instead, then they’d match the blade’s length to the depth of the wound during the autopsy, or they’d find some tiny trace of blood he’d missed, no matter how well he thought he’d cleaned it.

The longer he considered it, the more he convinced himself that the risk of being spotted ditching the knife was too great. Besides, he’d really come to like the sturdy weapon, the way the haft felt when he wrapped his hand around it.

What he liked even better, though, was the thrill that shot straight to his groin every time he returned to the fantasy of sheathing that blade inside warm flesh. Of clapping his free hand over her mouth and plunging the weapon deep inside her, again and again.

Though the original plan had been simply to scare her, to teach the bitch a lesson, wouldn’t getting rid of her solve so many problems?

Again he pictured himself taking her, his cock painfully hard as he imagined ramming the knife in to the hilt. Like a cold steel fucking, only this kind, with a little care, would leave no DNA behind.

Eager to ensure it, he pulled on his gloves—the heavy, cut-resistant pair he’d worn in her garage, since, careful as he was, there was always a chance he could nick himself and leave his blood for the cops to find.

As dusk deepened, his heart pounded with mounting anticipation. Pulling up the black hood of the sweatshirt he wore beneath his gray ski jacket, he slumped down behind the wheel, only a row away from the silver vehicle—another Mercedes—that he’d watched her park this morning.

There was nothing more to do now but wait. Wait and pray that she would head out across the lot alone.

It was dark by the time Christina hurried across the half-empty employee parking lot as she left work Monday evening. Dark and swiftly getting darker, thanks to the heavy clouds bearing down on them. Already the temperature was dropping. Her lungs ached with each indrawn breath, and her exhalations emerged in white plumes.

She slipped on a patch of ice and gasped as she caught herself barely in time to keep from falling. But it was the swift approach of footsteps from behind that had her whipping around, her entire body tensing. Seeing the petite Renee approaching, Christina forced herself to remain where she stood, close to a security light, rather than running for her loaner vehicle.

By the time Renee drew near enough for Christina to make out the angry furrow beneath her brows, it was too late to make a break for it. Too late to do anything but try to defuse the explosion Christina felt coming.

“Sorry I didn’t make it back upstairs,” she said, guilt needling her with the memory of the three texts she’d received asking her to stop by Jacob’s room in Pediatrics, where he’d been moved once his condition was upgraded. “I did pop in before my shift started. Jacob was sleeping, though, and you weren’t—”

“I’d just stepped out for a few minutes. But you knew that,” Renee said, her hair frizzy and her ski jacket hanging open. Devoid of makeup, she was paler than ever, her light freckling standing out, and her eyes shadowed by fatigue. “You’ve been deliberately avoiding me. If I hadn’t been watching out the window—”

“I’m not avoiding you,” Christina lied. “I just—I need to stop by my mom’s place before this storm hits, make sure everything’s battened down. And Annie texted to say she has dinner in the oven.”

Renee stared a hole in her, shutting down the excuses. Riding a breath of icy wind, the first few flurries spiraled down between them.

“I did talk to Dr. Marshall,” Christina said. “I was so relieved when she said Jacob’s completely conscious and responsive, and she expects a full recovery. That’s amazing news.”

Renee nodded, her eyes gleaming. “We’re hoping he’ll come home tomorrow. And I—I’m praying everything can just go back to normal, and he’ll be playing with Lilly again before we know it. He’s been asking for her.”

“She’s been wanting him, too, and believe me, I’ve been praying for him. You have no idea how hard. But I have to tell you, I have Annie watching Lilly for me now—”

“Hear me out, please.” Renee shoved away a thick lock that the wind had blown across her face. “All I wanted was to tell you in person that I—I didn’t mean what I said to Lilly.”

“And I’m very sorry for what she did, everything that contributed to Jacob’s fall. I’ve tried to talk to her about it, but I’m not sure she gets the concept.”

“I know she doesn’t understand,” Renee conceded, her flushing face a reminder of how difficult it had always been for her to admit that she’d been wrong. “And I was—it was my emotions talking. I
love
your daughter. You must know that.”

“It’s been a stressful time. I can’t imagine how terrified you must have been. There’s no need to explain,” Christina said, but she couldn’t stop thinking of her daughter, shaking so hard before her bladder had let loose.

“There is,” Renee insisted as more flurries alighted on her hair and jacket, “to you and especially to Lilly. I just want to take it all back, make it like none of this ever happened.”

“I understand. I do.” It wasn’t as if Christina didn’t have regrets of her own, hadn’t said things that no apology could ever entirely erase. But Renee hadn’t apologized exactly, had she? Instead, she’d only explained why she’d acted the way she had, while Christina had been the one to say how sorry she was. It reminded her sharply of junior high school, when her own lack of confidence had allowed her friend to call the shots.

“Is she—is Lilly all right?” Renee asked.

Christina nodded, telling herself that slights she’d suffered at thirteen didn’t matter; only the present mattered. And her child. “She’s happy enough. Or at least distracted, with Annie turning herself inside out to entertain her.”

But last night, her daughter had come to her crying at about two a.m., climbing into Christina’s bed claiming she was scared the bad lady would come smash her head in, too. Which was why she couldn’t back down, no matter how much the teenager inside her wished to.

“Harris—Harris brought the dinosaur. And Lilly’s stuffed pony, too. That was so sweet of her.”

“Jacob’s been like a brother to her.” Christina’s throat tightened at the thought of how close the two had become in the short time since she’d brought Lilly home to Seaside Creek.

“Then don’t keep her away from him. Or me. I want to watch her for you again. I want—listen, Christina,” Renee said, closing her eyes as she forced out the admission, “the truth is, it’s been hard for me to find work. Harris pays support, of course, but decent child care’s so expensive, if you can even get a slot, and with my mom still working . . . . This job, with you and Lilly—it’s been a godsend. I can bring him along and still—”

Christina forced herself to interrupt. “I think you need to concentrate on Jacob’s health for the time being. There’ll be additional appointments, follow-ups for tests, and maybe therapy to work on any lingering deficits while the injury’s still fresh—”

“I’m so much more reliable than Annie.” The pleading tone had given way to something harder. Something Christina remembered from other times when her friend hadn’t gotten her way. “She’ll just leave you in the lurch when you need her most, and we both know it.”

“My sister’s living with us. We’re working around her class schedule at the college.”

“College, my ass. She’s had the exact same advantages you did—and a heck of a lot more chances—but everybody knows she’s a career barmaid who hangs out with sleazebags and slackers.”

Christina stiffened, ignoring the biting cold and the snowflakes that were now coming down in earnest. Snowflakes so like the ones that had sifted through the darkness as she’d held her infant sister in her arms.

“You and I have been friends for a lot of years,” Christina said, understanding that it had cost Renee—cost her dearly—to admit how badly she needed the job, “and I hope we can be friends still. As long as you don’t imagine that friendship gives you permission to talk trash about my family.”

A few spaces beyond them in the lot, she heard the sound of an engine turning over. Considering the building rage on Renee’s face, the way she was glaring, Christina felt grateful that there was a witness nearby.

At least until Renee spoke. “You used to think—you were grateful when I took you under my wing. Grateful I would have a little dweeb like you for a friend. But now you believe you’re better than me, don’t you,” she demanded, her voice rising, “with your fancy car and your big house?”

“My mom’s
client’s
house. My
husband’s
car,” Christina reflexively corrected before remembering the ugly word that had been carved into the glossy black paint. Ugliness directed at her and her alone.

“Well, it’s all yours now, right? Maybe not the house, but everybody knows it
could
be. And we’re all supposed to kiss your ass and call you
Dr.
 Paxton.”

“I’ve never once asked you to call me that, Renee. You know that.”

“No, but you might as well, while you’re treating me like the help. Somebody you can dismiss on a whim.”

“Oh, come on.” Christina’s annoyance ratcheted higher. Whatever the local rumor mill was saying, she had neither the money nor the inclination to buy some beachfront showplace. Plus, she was freezing standing out here, her gloveless fingers tingling. “I’ve told you at least a dozen times how grateful I’ve been to find someone I know and trust with Lilly.” She’d paid Renee generously as well. Possibly excessively, in the hope of ensuring a stable child-care situation for a daughter who’d experienced far too many changes lately.

“But you don’t trust me anymore.” Renee’s chin rose with the accusation.

“I don’t. I can’t,” Christina admitted, “because I’ve seen firsthand—on more than one occasion—that you have . . . you have anger issues.”

“Anger issues?
Really?
”
Renee’s sarcasm sliced the frigid air like a hot blade. “I can’t imagine why.”

Christina shook her head, anxiety a burning coal in her throat. Because she didn’t want to think what she was thinking, to imagine that her old friend, out of jealousy or resentment or heaven only knew what, could have anything to do with the vandalism—or the voice Christina had heard.
She can’t know about my birth mother, can she?
Or could the rumor mill have somehow gotten hold of the whole horrific story? Despite their adoptive parents’ repeated warnings that the real details were best kept to themselves, had Annie told some loose-lipped friend that there was far more to their adoption than her mom and dad’s vague assertions that they’d privately arranged to take in the daughters of a distant cousin who’d died?

Forcing the suspicion from her mind, Christina said, “I’m sorry for you, Renee. Sorry about you and Harris, sorry about your job, and deeply, deeply sorry that Jacob was hurt. But right now, I have my own issues to deal with. There’s no way I can handle yours, too. And no way I’ll risk my child’s well-being, not for you or anyone.”

“This isn’t right. You can’t just—”

“If you’d like,” Christina said, her voice softening as she saw the tears gleaming on her friend’s cheek, “I can get you a referral. There’s a county program. They have counselors at no charge, to help with life transitions.”

Vibrating with outrage, Renee shrieked, “You think I need a shrink now? You think—”

“I’ve considered seeing someone myself. I just thought you might—”

Renee’s hard stare shut her down.

Realizing she was only making things worse, Christina pulled a key out of her coat pocket and clicked the Mercedes’s fob. A short distance away, the silver SUV’s lights flashed as the alarm system chirped its recognition.

“Good night, Renee,” she said, not knowing how else to end the conversation. She started walking toward the rental, forcing herself not to break into a run.

And stumbling, her heart freezing with her onetime friend’s parting shot.

“You know what, Christina? You’re not only freaking crazy, you really are a cunt.”