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But Delta . . . Mrs. Delta Stahd, married to Dr. Tanner Stahd, the teenage god. Wow. Tanner’d sure proved that moniker wrong. A cheater. A liar. An over-and-under bad guy. And Delta had married him. Ellie had been so jealous of her at the time.
You still are. She’s got McCrae . . .
Her brain shied away from thoughts of him. She could get herself so riled up when it came to him. Sometimes she hated him most of all. A lot of sometimes. Was that love masquerading as hate?
She refused to think about him anymore. Think of something else. Like what’s your next job going to be? How’re you going to pay the rent? Buy food? And gas? What if this dearth of employment goes on a while?
She was calcula
ting the number of months she had before her meager savings gave out when she saw Delta’s car come along and pull into the garage. Finally. She checked her watch and was surprised to see that her excruciating wait had been an hour and ten minutes.
She was just getting herself psyched to charge up to Delta’s front door and rap loudly—it was past time Delta gave her that interview—when Delta’s car whipped back out of the garage, and she took off.
Where are you going in such a hurry? Is your kid in the car?
Questions, questions, questions.
Ellie reached for the key to turn on her ignition but stopped in the process as a large black Tahoe pulled away from the curb, turned on its blinker, then slipped around the curb after Delta’s car.
“Who’re you?” she asked aloud, then started her car and slid onto the road after them.
* * *
Amanda put down Bailey’s journal, having read it cover to cover. She was hungry. She’d made a trip to see Thom, but she hadn’t stayed through dinner. He’d been more interested in being with others at the care facility, which had been the slow trend, a good one, since the accident. The less he needed her, the better, for both of them.
And she had another appointment to keep.
Rising from her seat at the table, she stretched her back. She had an idea who’d killed Tanner Stahd. Not from Bailey’s notes, which mostly were a series of scenarios explaining Carmen’s death as either accidental or stemming from a lack of caring on the part of the classmates . . . all the way to flat-out murder. No, it was thinking about Zora that had put it in play, so she had some questions. She would show her hand if she was right, but if so, she would head straight to the police. Maybe she was playing with fire. Or maybe she could be completely wrong.
Delta would be coming over, and Amanda hadn’t had anything to eat since some carrot sticks and hummus after her run.
Should you tell Delta?
No, not yet.
She heard something outside again. In the direction of the garage. She’d thought the noises she’d heard earlier were from whoever had left Bailey’s notebook—her front-door camera picked up a man in a gray hoodie, hunched over, hiding his face—but here they were again.
It was 7:00. Light and hot and still breezy. In fact, the wind was picking up.
She heard a banging sound and saw that an upper window of the garage had come open and was swinging back and forth against the building, slamming into the wall, rattling the panes.
The garage was locked. She kept a key in a drawer just inside the back door. If she was going to fix the window, she was going to have to get the key and go up the stairs that bisected the two bays of the garage. The golf cart was kept in one side. The other side was empty; Amanda preferred to park right outside the back door.
Grabbing up the key, she headed to the garage. She unlocked the door and stopped in sudden surprise.
“What the hell?” she asked aloud.
A black-shrouded figure suddenly rushed from behind the golf cart. Amanda screamed and turned to run. The attacker grabbed her from behind. Swung her around. Crashed her head into the newel post at the bottom of the stairway. She saw stars. A swimming circle of them, just like in the cartoons. She tried to say something, but her tongue was too thick.
She’d lost a shoe in the fight, and her assailant picked it up and jammed it back on her foot. Then he dragged her out of the door of the garage and bumped her along the tarmac toward the back door of her house.
* * *
“Are you okay?” Mom asked, concerned, as Delta dropped Owen and his blanket off at their house.
“I won’t be long. It’s just a meeting with my lawyer.”
“But are you okay?”
