Chapter 2

Beethoven’s Fifth flooded the den, but Colin was no longer there.

Josie peeked through the open door of the hall bathroom. His toothbrush stood in its holder beside an open tube of toothpaste.

The door to his bedroom was closed. Since no light shone beneath it, Josie entered without knocking or asking permission.

A glow from the hall draped across the red and white bed lamp, picking out the Biddy Football trophy on the shelf above his headboard. Colin still wore the clothes he’d had on, a sure sign of his exhaustion. He had pulled back the covers. He was asleep on his stomach, one leg straight. The other had his knee cocked, forming a small triangle. His right arm gathered his pillow into its crook.

She leaned close to his face.

His warm breaths sounded labored. Not nearly as bad as sometimes. No rattles.

A good sign. Maybe he was getting better.

The instinct came to take off his jeans and jersey and slip him into pajamas. She quelled that urge, wordlessly chiding herself for taking so many of their mother’s habits. Who else kept a house so tidy it seemed as if no one lived in it? This child’s body did not function perfectly. He didn’t need perfection thrust upon him.

His legs stretched. The soles of his socks remained as white as if he had just put them on. His jersey stayed clean. Josie wished he could have gotten his whole outfit as filthy as other boys did when they played. Most of those kids would be settling down in front of TV about now, while her brother lay asleep, worn out from his treatment.

She pulled the bottom edge of his jersey down over his back and then drew the top sheet above his legs. She touched his cheek. Cool. Josie peered at the crucifix that hung above the shelf holding his football and whispered a prayer for him.

She pecked his cheek and grinned, knowing he would issue a mock complaint and wipe his face if she kissed him while he was awake.

He had set his alarm. Feeling smug for the stolen kiss, Josie went out, softly shutting the door. Before she took another step, Colin’s barking coughs stopped her. She stared at his door, waiting long moments until the coughing stopped. Silently Josie cursed the reminder that he really wasn’t getting better.

Remaining uneasy, she cleaned his machine with a solution that smelled of bleach and analyzed what else now bothered her. Mr. Allen’s new partner. Why hadn’t he come to meet her while the whole family stood near? Instead, he seemed to ooze out of their SUV and blend into the evening’s darkness. And Maurice?

She pushed her focus away from concerns, wanting to focus on cheerful music instead. Someone began speaking on the stereo. “We will be watching a new low pressure system that’s building in the Atlantic.” The local announcer paused and his tone shifted. “The identity of the area’s second murder victim has not yet been revealed.”

Josie turned him off. She’d had enough sour thoughts for one evening.

* * *

Sylvie’s door remained shut the next day once Josie’s alarm rang. She heard Colin’s ring moments later. He looked rested when they met. Josie came out of the hall bathroom, and he headed in.

“Hey,” he said.

“That’s for bulls.” Josie smirked, having given him the response he usually gave her. The silly reply was better than what she wanted to say. But she fought the urge to ask how he’d slept and if he felt well. She had done that so often at first. But her sibling knew his condition. The child seemed to accept his body’s frailty much better than she did.

He had a good appetite today, eating two small bowls of cereal, one with milk and one without since his fluids were limited.

“I’ll look for another glass to replace the one I broke,” Josie said, joining him at the table.

He waved the idea away. “I can drink out of regular glasses, Josie.” The way he said it indicated his annoyance.

“Okay, then I won’t look.”

“Okay, good.” Colin’s voice remained young. He wanted to be taller, and Josie wished he would fill out more. He had already dressed in his khaki shorts and white knit shirt for school. Josie kept on her nightshirt. She covered it with a light robe and opened the front door right before he came through. He narrowed his eyes at her.

She shrugged. “I’m just checking the weather.”

His grimace told her he knew better. “Yeah, and you need to see what kind of clothes to wear today.”

“Right.”

He shifted past without saying goodbye. The grass still looked damp. Josie was surprised to note that some leaves of the red maples lining the long cement path to the sidewalk had begun to turn scarlet. Halfway down that path, Colin stopped to adjust his bulky mesh backpack. He cocked his head so that he could eye her. She had used the same excuse so often for coming to see him off after he had complained that his friends would think he was a baby if his big sister came out to the bus stop. Now she played this game, and every day his lips pressed together while he strode past her. But she was only checking the day’s weather. As though it would change much.

He turned back. “Hey, Andrew called last night.”

“He did?”

“Yeah, when you went outside.”

Josie smiled. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Brakes hissed as the school bus slowed neared Colin’s stop. He hurried toward the sidewalk, calling over his shoulder, “He needed to keep working on that guy’s bike.”

“Wait,” Josie called, and he looked at her. “Did he say anything else?”

“Yeah. He said tell you stop trying to act like a mean mamma.”

She grinned, waiting for him to smile. The bus stopped, and he climbed in without glancing back at her.

She forced her gaze away from the street, attuning herself to the moment when her brother would glance toward their stoop to see if she was staring. She straightened her arms, locked the fingers of both hands, turned them backward and stretched. Her arms and spine elongated. She rose on her toes, hoping that while Colin peered out from the seventh seat, she would appear to be only taking a stretch outdoors. She would not let herself look at him.

The yellow bulk left her outer vision, and she spotted someone with a balding head and lemon yellow shirt across the street. He was waving at her. “Good morning, Mr. Fletcher,” Josie called to return his greeting. He continued his usual early morning pruning of the ground beneath his many palm trees as she went back inside.

She was almost finished showering when the water’s pressure lowered, letting her know her mother had risen and begun her own shower. Sylvie’s long ritual would turn her pink room into a steam bath with sweltering walls. Her bedroom door would be shut and the bathroom door open. After she would be done, Sylvie could nearly wring out the tassels on the domed canopy of her bed.

Josie blew her long hair dry, dressed, and walked to Sylvie’s bedroom. The bed was already fixed. Half a dozen pillows rested in their nesting places. What surprised Josie in her mother’s inner sanctuary was that the walnut lap tray still sat atop her chaise lounge instead of being placed on the small table beside it.

Josie felt her hair and clothes droop. “Morning,” she called through the multi-colored pastel shower curtain.

“Good morning.” Sylvie’s voice sounded like she might be crooning to a male sweetheart.

Josie waited while the steaming water continued to fall. Finally she decided to leave the room, or she’d have to dry her hair again. “Have a nice day,” she called.

“You, too.”

Just once, Josie thought, she wished her mother would stick her head out from the shower and look at her before she departed.

Immediately Josie knew why she kept going out every morning to see her little brother off. If their mother wouldn’t act like a responsible parent, Josie needed to. A friend recently said responsibility should be stamped across Josie’s forehead for all of her parents’ duties she now shouldered.

She was in the garage, ready to leave for work, and turned the key and pressed the foot petals. Her car whined. Gas fumes swept through the garage. Her little car was cranky again.

She heaved a sigh. Andrew had told her how to make the car start when it didn’t want to. She tried again, starting it with a light tap from her right foot. Grinding sounded. She tried again. The air seethed with the stench of gasoline.

She turned off the motor, rolled down her window, and waited. Maybe it was good that, because of her brother’s poor health and their mother’s curious behavior, she couldn’t go far from the house for very long. Her car might not make it.

The garage’s interior looked almost as clean as the house. Twice a year Sylvie wiped down the paneled walls, with Josie helping her. Two bikes stood at the rear. A closet hid their few tools and the riding mower. One shelf ran across a rear wall, keeping boxes of items that wouldn’t fit in the small closet. No oil or debris marred the concrete floor.

Parked near her little car, Sylvie’s big boxy model glistened as though it were new. Josie couldn’t determine whether their mother recently had her car polished, for she had that done every time a bird dropping marred its gray sheen. If only their mother realized how much they needed to conserve. Colin’s needs were so many. They had to put more cash aside.

Sylvie apparently comprehended his illness but continued to live in that dream world, always waiting. “Everything will look so tidy and neat when your father comes back.” Sylvie’s words rang in Josie’s ears, for they’d been repeated so often.

Josie’s fingers tapped an angry dance on her cracked steering wheel. She noticed movement coming from a rear corner of the garage.

Something fell from a shelf.

Her heart jumped. A streak of fear jolted through her.

With a howl, Annie’s tabby Misty landed on all four paws next to her car. The cat’s rump rose, its tail standing like a flag at attention. Misty stared at Josie a second and shot out of the garage.

Josie took a deep breath, her pulse stilling. She didn’t scare often and reprimanded her body for reacting so strongly. A quiet place inside her knew what caused this response: the recent severe thunderstorms and especially last night’s weather, still with its haunting effects. She tried to stave off her negative thoughts and replace them with pressing duties, but the scene from the past repeated. Crashes of thunder and bleached yellow flashes came to her at unusual times since it happened, making her entire body freeze. Her mind saw the child who’d quit moving and heard those screams. All those other children. And her.

Squeezing her eyes shut, Josie pressed her hands to her ears.

She clasped the clammy steering wheel and cranked the engine. This time it caught.

Josie spent much of the day draping delicate lace tablecloths against the ecru walls and arranging pretty collars and beaded purses, hoping Andrew would get a chance to phone her. She enjoyed the texture of items in This ’n That Shop and especially liked their creamy colors. The store was small and sold quaint accessories and a few select items of apparel. Since there was no show window, Josie had reasoned that few clients came in because of the store’s name. Most tourists would have no idea what they might find at an establishment called This ’n That.

She’d suggested to Hal Ripley, the owner, that he might change the name to include the words Antique or Victorian. But he’d shrugged and given a flip of his head, making the few strands of black dyed hair covering his scalp fly. Now, as she arranged antique pins in a display case, Josie heard the door open.

Cora Ripley swept in. “What a pain in the butt today’s been.”

“Hi to you, too,” Josie said, pleased to have someone with her, even the boss’s ex-wife. “I didn’t know you were coming in today.”

The large woman shook fluffy red hair and caught her lavender cloth hat before it fell to the floor. “Nice surprise, huh? You never know when I’ll pop up. And neither does my old sweetheart.” Cora pursed thick lips and raised pencil-drawn eyebrows. “Did he come here today?”

Not wanting to betray her boss, Josie decided answering the question wouldn’t constitute a problem. “Not yet.”

“Good. I’ll be counting his money. Or should I say, ‘our’ money?” She glanced over the nearest display case.

Josie smiled and returned to her work. In the two years since Josie started here, Cora arrived every Wednesday and Friday morning right before nine o’clock. Ever since the Ripleys separated, Cora continued that schedule, declaring she was not about to let go of controlling the cash. If Hal tried to screw her, she’d announced, she would have him by the most delicate part of his anatomy. His wallet.

But recently, ever since their divorce finalized, things around the store changed. Cora showed up at varying days and times. She told Josie she liked to keep him guessing.

Hal Ripley also changed. Lately he trimmed the gray hair that sprouted from his ears. Josie sometimes found her boss’s thin voice almost purring to her, hinting of flirtation. He’d begun to stand so close she smelled his cinnamon breath spray. She found his habits of late disconcerting, but if she was the one who was divorced and had an ex showing up whenever, Josie thought she might also act strangely.

She tried to recall the other recent unusual transformation in her boss, but the front door opened. Cora disappeared into her office.

Mr. Antonelli held the door open for his wife.

“Hello. I was afraid we’d miss you this week,” Josie said to the couple.

Mrs. Antonelli came in first. “Good afternoon, Josie.” Her husband merely nodded in Josie’s direction. The only thing Josie could ever recall them purchasing was the crystal rosary bracelet Mrs. Antonelli wanted for her birthday last year, yet once a week the pair came in to look. The wife, petite with a surprisingly strong square chin along with tiny features, fingered each tablecloth that was hanging or stacked. Her burly husband normally looked at Josie like he’d like to finger her.

Gazes from the stocky man with thick charcoal hair and deep-set eyes at first made her uneasy, but she’d soon figured a rebuttal. Whenever Josie discovered his grizzly eyes steady on her, instead of glancing away, she met his stare with her own.

Her tactic worked.

She only needed to return that stare once while Mrs. Antonelli touched the ladies’ vests decorated with unusual buttons. As soon as Josie’s direct gaze answered his, Mr. Antonelli swung away. His gaze rested upon a bare wall.

Glancing at Cora’s open doorway, Josie saw her looking out and grinning. Cora long ago mentioned that she’d seen how this man ogled Josie. Now Cora nodded in the direction of the Antonellis, smirked, and rolled her eyes.

Josie smiled and neared the small person who smelled like she’d just coated herself with baby powder. “How have you been?” Josie asked, noticing that today worry lines folded across Mrs. Antonelli’s slender forehead.

Instead of her usual distracted “Just fine,” the delicate woman looked up at Josie. A damp film coated her eyes. “It’s been hard.” The tip of her nose was pink. She sniffled. “My sister’s granddaughter was murdered.”

“Oh no. Was she the girl at the beach?”

Mrs. Antonelli nodded. Tears fell to her cheeks. “She lived near our house.”

Josie clasped the lady’s cold fingers. “I am so sorry.”

The strong chin quivered. Mrs. Antonelli reached inside her small purse and took out a snapshot. “Wasn’t she lovely?”

Josie stared at the face of a young woman who seemed in the prime of her life. Coal-black hair framed a perfect oval face. A narrow nose. Dark gray eyes.

Josie’s breath caught. Her back tensed. She’d recently stared into those eyes.

She handed the picture back. “She’s beautiful. I saw her not long ago.”

Her customer winced and carefully replaced the picture.

Josie recounted the incident. “Some time during the last two weeks. It was evening. I’d gone to Toni’s Supermarket.”

She relived the scene. A light rain had started. Quite a few people were inside. “I had just gone in and stopped to select apples. A blast like an explosion came from outside.”

Again immersed in that place, she squeezed her eyes shut. Josie breathed and forced them open. She saw the elder’s gray eyes watching hers. “I stared at the glass doors. So did other people around me. The blast repeated and rain poured down.” Somebody had said, “Oh, that was only thunder.” Josie hadn’t known who spoke, for she’d knocked against the apple stack. From their rows, a dozen or more red spheres rolled. They thumped on the floor. Feeling ridiculous, Josie began gathering and replacing them as best she could.

“Someone said she’d just done the same thing. I looked up,” Josie said, again meeting Mrs. Antonelli’s gaze. “And I saw the young woman you showed me. She was squatting near, retrieving navel oranges from the floor. She had such pretty dark hair and those gray eyes.” Josie noticed the eyes because they were wide with fright, as she knew matched her own. “We watched each other picking up fruit from the floor and started laughing.”

Mrs. Antonelli’s face softened. Her lips formed a faint smile. “You met her?”

“I wish I had. But we laughed at ourselves and kept picking. It was like we knew how silly we must have looked to the people around us.” The young woman from Mrs. Antonelli’s picture had then strolled on, pushing her buggy but glancing back over her shoulder at the glass doors with fear in her eyes.

Now she couldn’t see any longer.

* * *

The radio was telling her name. “Libby Bixley was the killer’s latest victim. Arrangements have been made.”

Libby, thought the man driving. Libby had been lovely.

He smiled, recalling what she did the first time he noticed her. When he became attracted.

She stared with those gray eyes open wide, a gasp leaving her pretty throat. Outside, there was only thunder. She must have thought it was something more. Something more threatening.

But he had been inside the store. In an aisle close to her, he’d watched. Not the weather. Her.

He saw her face, how it blanched when the thunder exploded. Libby’s body jumped and then trembled. The eyes grew wider and her head whipped back.

Libby Bixley knew fear.

She had known it that evening when the weather turned rainy, and she made such a grand display of fright after he reached her yesterday down at the beach.

He had watched for her ever since that evening in the store even though he’d been especially on the lookout for the other one.

Women could reveal their want of him when stormy weather hit. Especially during heavy thunderstorms, so many of them liked to expose every emotion. Excited, trembling bodies. Their mouths open wide. And their eyes.

When storms stuck—that’s when they really wanted him.

He had discovered the most perfect specimen.

Josie Aspen could show fearful reactions like no other.

When he witnessed her display of fright alongside Libby’s that evening at the store, he’d felt such excitement that he needed to fight himself to contain what he wanted to do. From all of the therapy hehad after he got away with those wonderful deeds back in Natchez, he knew.

The urge reached him now. Angry with those therapists and Dr. Hanover, he shook his head. Keep your hands to yourself and on the wheel. No, look, rain is falling.

He snapped on the wipers. They swished across his windshield, words from the radio no longer entering his mind.

He’d had to wait. Plot and wait. Once he had seen both beautiful creatures revealing such terror, he watched for them.

Yesterday he located Libby, so lovely stretched on her back across her beach towel, her eyelashes laced together as though she was sleeping.

But she’d surely been waiting for him to arrive.

Those gray eyes had popped opened. They’d turned paler except for their pinpoints. Those had expanded. Libby, with her face twisting in that grotesque expression. Her lips had come apart like they were trying for screams, but she’d only whimpered.

The man’s heart pounded. He turned his hands up from the steering wheel to admire them. Strong hands. Powerful enough to stop her lips’ sounds.

The rain struck his car louder.

When those two women cried out in the supermarket, they wanted to entice him. As surely as he was breathing, he knew they’d reacted that way to attract his attention.

He smiled, tightening his fingers on the steering wheel. The knurled section on its rear reminded him of the feel of Libby’s neck bones.

She had drawn him to her with her fears like a cur in heat drawing in suitors.

And he’d found her.

Shaking with glee, he remembered. Her name was Libby.

But she was not the main woman he was after.

Very shortly an announcer, possibly the same one who just spoke about Libby, would say the name of the other one. Both of the young women had thrown down those fruits. Both knew pure horror.

Again he would experience it close up. Feel her tremble. Know those thrills.

The late afternoon weather around him appeared gloomy. The man smiled at blacker clouds ahead. Thunder and lightning must abound in them. Crashing thunder seemed to thrill Josie.

Of course he knew where she worked. He was headed there now.