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Blam!
Ned’s body jerked again.
Agony spiraled through his body.
The ooze of blood was warm against his skin.
His strength gave way, and the world spun.
He seemed to be floating from a body full of pain, and he saw himself on the grass, his body at a grotesque angle, blood blooming through his shirt, his arm outstretched and only inches from Trudie’s still form. He wanted to reach out and touch her just one last time, and he tried to stretch out his hand, but nothing moved, not even a finger.
Thud! The hard toe of a boot landed hard against his ribs and forced him onto his back. Pain screamed through every inch of him, radiating from the point of impact. Bringing him back. Sharply. No longer floating above, he was back in his broken, bloody body. In agony, he tried to focus. His vision blurred as he stared at the night sky. Tried to focus.
Stars. He saw the stars.
He blinked and recognized a slice of moon like the pale smile of the Cheshire Cat.
And in the foreground, bending over him to see if he was dead or alive, was the killer. His face was bleeding, bruised, and scraped raw from the attack of the pitchfork, but he was still recognizable. “You prick,” he said, before hocking blood and spittle onto Ned’s upturned face. “Die! And do it slowly. Feel it. Know that Trudie’s dead.”
Ned felt the warmth of ooze running down his face and knew, in that moment, the mind-numbing wrench of heartache.
Trudie. Sweet Trudie. What did we do?
In the next instant, Ned Crenshaw’s entire world went black.
CHAPTER 24
“It’s just up here. Right there. Right there. On the left,” Noah said, pointing through the windshield of the Subaru to a break in the split-rail fence.
Remmi slowed to turn into the lane, the Subaru’s headlights washing over the row of oak trees flanking the drive.
Her fingers were tight on the wheel, knuckles showing white, as she’d driven with an urgency she couldn’t name. If she could talk to Ned, to Trudie, to find out what they knew about Didi, maybe some of the questions about her past could be answered.
The rain that had poured in San Francisco subsided once they were off the peninsula. They’d crawled through Oakland, but traffic had finally become lighter, and Remmi was able to push the speed limit. The sky had cleared, clouds no longer blocking the moon or the thousands of winking stars.
During the drive, she and Noah had discussed the mystery surrounding Didi, caught up on their own lives, and speculated about how Gertrude Melborn, Didi’s one-time best friend, had ended up becoming the second Mrs. Ned Crenshaw before assuming the alias of Maryanne Osgoode.
Remmi planned to find out.
The drive sloped steadily upward and opened to a wide parking area with several outbuildings huddled near the gravel skirt. A low-slung ranch-style house dominated the rise, and two vehicles, a battered pickup without a tail gate and a red sedan, were parked in front of a garage connected to the house by an open breezeway.
Her heart was pounding at the thought of seeing Ned again, the one positive, if short-lived, father figure in her life. And Trudie? Didi’s once-upon-a-time best friend? The woman who was supposedly taking care of Ariel that night, though Didi had obviously lied. Still, Trudie knew about the twins, she’d even mentioned them in the book, though only that Remmi had insisted to the police that she had a half brother and sister.
Remmi had a million questions for both Ned and Trudie. Finally, she hoped, she’d get some answers.
Whether she liked what she heard or not.
“Go time,” she said, parking behind the red car and cutting the engine. She took one deep breath, then was out of the Subaru and heading up a gravel walkway to the front porch. A dog was barking wildly, and in the distance toward the back of the property and farther away, she thought she heard a car’s engine turn over.
She was near a wide front porch when a caramel-colored dog, part lab mixed with something shaggier, bounded through the breezeway, leaped onto the porch and started barking wildly at them.
“Hey, boy,” Noah said, but the dog just backed up, racing to the breezeway and back again. Finally, he didn’t return. Just kept up his ruckus.
Remmi pressed the doorbell as Noah stared after the dog. They’d agreed that she would take the lead on this. It was her show.
No one answered.
She pushed on the doorbell again.
