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Dark SUV. Like hers.
BMW. Like the one she’d just chased within an inch of her life.
Oh. Dear. God. Elizabeth swallowed hard and closed her eyes.
The detective thinks you were there. That you killed him.
“But I wasn’t on the freeway with Court. It wasn’t me!” she said aloud, wondering what in the world was happening to her?
The door from the house burst open, light spilling into the dark garage. Chloe, blond curls bouncing, raced into the garage. “Mommy?”
Pulling her thoughts up short, Elizabeth came back to the here and now. She pushed open the driver’s door and climbed out, but her knees shivered a little, threatening to give out. Forcing a smile, she leaned against the hood of the car. “Hi, sweetie.”
“Mommy, Misty’s been on the phone all day,” Chloe complained, her little arms folded over her chest.
“Has she?”
“I wanted to play with her, but she’s mean. I don’t like her!”
This was a new tack, a ploy for attention. “Oh, come on, Chloe. You adore Misty. Let’s go back inside.” Forcing her legs to move, Elizabeth pushed off the car, then bent down to give her daughter a quick unwelcome hug.
“I don’t adore her,” Chloe maintained as she slithered out of her mother’s arms.
“Fine. You don’t.” Placing her hand between her daughter’s shoulder blades and guiding her into the house, Elizabeth said, “Let’s just go inside, anyway.” She pulled the door shut behind her and found Misty in the kitchen..
Coltish, with big brown eyes and a penchant for temporary tattoos—bound to be the real thing once she turned eighteen—Misty set down her cell phone onto the counter as if caught in some nefarious act.
“See?” Chloe crowed triumphantly as she pointed at the girl.
“I wasn’t on my phone the whole time,” Misty defended herself even before Elizabeth could open her mouth. “We played together.”
Chloe muttered, “Barely.”
“A lot,” Misty argued and adopted a hurt expression, as if her young charge had betrayed her. “We always do.”
“Nuh-uh!”
“Enough,” Elizabeth interjected. “It’s over.” While Chloe flopped sullenly on the floor, Elizabeth hastily wrote the teenager a check, thanked her and, as Misty let herself out the front door, called a hasty, “Good-bye.”
Chloe’s head was turned, watching the sitter leave, but as soon as the door shut with a soft thud, she whipped back to her mother. “She was on the phone the whole time. She lied.”
“Maybe she was on the phone today more than usual.” Elizabeth pulled a bottle of water from the fridge, cracked off the top and took a long swallow.
Chloe jumped up from the floor. “She was!”
“I’ll have a talk with her about it.” Still shaken from the road rage incident, she didn’t have time for Chloe’s petty squabbles. To change the course of the conversation, she said, “We’re going to dinner at Lissa’s house soon, so—”
“When?”
“In a little while. I—”
”No! When are you going to talk to her?” Chloe’s fists were on her hips and she had that stubborn look in her eye.
So the ploy to detour her child didn’t work.
“Misty?” Elizabeth asked, taking another long swallow as Chloe nodded her head wildly. “Probably the next time she babysits.”
“I never want her to babysit me again!”
