Almost Dead (33 page)

The headache Diedre had been fighting began to throb. Through her ears a great, rushing sound nearly drowned out the hated words. Still, she heard them, watched as Marla’s red lips formed the syllables.

“Giving you up for adoption wasn’t some great sacrifice because I loved you and thought you deserved a better life. I was just not ready for a baby, and I’m not really sure who your father is, okay? It was a time in my life I’d rather forget, but you came looking for me and offered me a way out of prison, so I took it. End of story.”

Diedre couldn’t believe it! How many years had she gone to the prison, pretending to be a person of faith, like Mary Smith, and met with another inmate, one who had passed the information on to Marla? How long had she worked in that joke of a job at the coffee shop, just to get close to Cissy? All this was part of Jack’s plan…for the Amhurst money…that’s what it was all about. “I–I’m your daughter.”

“You’re
not
my daughter. I wasn’t there for you and I didn’t want to be. I’m not about to sugar-coat this and claim that I pined away for you all my life. The truth of the matter is that I spent a few months thinking about you, and then I decided to pretend that you were dead, that I’d never see you again. I had a life to live; one without you. And I had another child, one I cared about, whose father I married. Cissy’s my daughter, Diedre, the girl I raised. You’re a stranger.”

Diedre was shaking her head, disbelieving, fighting the fury that was burning through her. “I’ve done so much for you so we could be together.”

“Oh, save me.”

Pain boiled through Diedre. Despair darkened her heart. Anger exploded in her brain. She was being rejected all over again. “You don’t mean it,” she said, but she knew. Marla was right. She’d used Diedre, played with her emotions, had never felt a pang of love for her firstborn.

“For the love of God, don’t go through some freaky, maudlin routine with me. I’ve got no time for it. We’ve got things to do.” She was walking from one end of the room to the other, pacing, thinking, her shoes tapping on the hardwood, echoing in sharp painful jabs in Diedre’s brain. “Now, do I have a bed in this hellhole or what?”

The words rang through Diedre’s head. The sharp click of Marla’s heels cut through her brain. She winced, tried to keep her thoughts straight, but for the first time she realized Marla, her own flesh and blood, her damned
MOTHER
,
had played her for a fool. She’d used Diedre’s emotions against her. “Don’t you love me?” she whispered. Her adoptive mother hadn’t loved her, either.

“Enough! This is not about love.”

“Of course it is!”

The rush in her head became louder. “You’re my—”

“I used you to get out of prison,” Marla cut her off. “You did it because this is the only way you’ll get any chance at the Amhurst money. That’s all there was to it.”

“No!”

Marla let out a disgusted puff of air. “Sorry if I destroyed any of your fantasies.”

Diedre didn’t realize she was reaching into her purse, her fingers fumbling for the gun. She pulled it out and lifted it, pointing it straight at Marla.

The woman who was supposed to be her mother gazed at her with disgust. “Oh, for God’s sake, don’t go all overly dramatic on me.”

“I risked everything for you,” Diedre whispered, her hand shaking as she held the gun. “Everything.” Tears slid down her face. “And you didn’t care about me at all.”

“Put the gun down.”

“Say you love me.”

“What?”

“Tell me that you’re my mother and that you love me,” she said, the damned gun wobbling all over.

“Diedre…oh, for the love of God, you don’t have the guts to pull the trigger,” Marla said as a car backfired on the street. Marla turned, faced the window, and Diedre fired. One quick shot to the back of her mother’s head. “I loved you,” she whimpered. “I always loved you…so beautiful…why…Mama…Why…?”

Now, at the Amhurst house, with the wind rising and screaming outside, Diedre stared at Jack. She blinked. Shook the image out of her head. It had been a dream, only a dream. A nightmare.

Right?

She’d visited Marla plenty of times since then…and…and…Her throat tightened. In her mind’s eye, she remembered falling to her knees, holding the dead woman, crying and rocking. “You’re not dead,” she’d whispered over and over, “You are
not
dead. We have so much to do…” And she’d carried her mother downstairs to the room she’d prepared and Marla had slept and…and…she’d gotten better…that was the way it was. Diedre had visited her and spoken with her and fed her and…surely…oh…of course Marla was alive! She was just confused. And Jack, he was using it against her for a reason she didn’t understand. She focused on him now, standing in front of her, half-crazed with anger. “Why are you lying to me?” she demanded, furious with him.

“Goddamn it, Diedre! She’s dead, and I think she has been for a long time.”

She was shaking her head, but the headache, the fog, returned. Through the rising mist she remembered the argument, the gun in her hand…a loud bang and Marla falling, spinning, turning, her face twisted in shock. Now she blinked rapidly, clearing her head. That was a dream. Surely. But Jack was reaching into his jacket, pulling out a videotape wrapped in a plastic bag.

“I thought you would try to deny it,” he muttered, turning on the older model television and VCR, shoving the tape in the recorder. She stared at the snowy screen as he adjusted some of the knobs. “Here we go.” He hit the play button, and a jerky image of a woman reporter standing in front of the bungalow showed on the screen.

The newswoman was holding a microphone in the rain, wincing a little with the blast of wind. “…prison escapee Marla Cahill was found dead this afternoon in the house you see behind me…”

“That’s not right,” Diedre murmured. She had dreamed of killing the bitch, but she’d never actually pulled the trigger…right? She hadn’t killed Marla….

“…partially decomposed body from the house…”

A stretcher covered by a body bag appeared rolling from the back of the house, the rear porch Diedre recognized, to a waiting van from the coroner’s office.

“No,” she whispered, shaking her head.

“She wasn’t supposed to die yet, not until we could frame her for the murders. You stupid, stupid bitch, what were you thinking? Are you out of your fucking mind?”

She glared at him. Instead of being proud of her for all the things she’d done for him, he was pissed as hell. Furious, he snapped off the television and the VCR. The house was suddenly silent. Still.

“You were not supposed to kidnap my grandson,” Jack said, so angry he was shaking. “He’s the link. I fought like hell for my son Jack to meet Cissy, and then when they were married, I thought I’d won the lottery. Then she started talking divorce, and you…you messed things up but good. I don’t know why I ever bothered with you.”

“Jack—”

“It’s Jonathan,” he said coldly, denying her the nickname she’d given him, the one like his son’s. She’d thought it cute and playful, and he’d put up with it. Until now.

She leaned against the bed. Everything was changing, swirling in her mind. Did she actually kill the bitch then delude herself into believing that the corpse was actually alive? God, her head ached. She rubbed her temples, trying to think. She remembered several conversations with Marla. Her mother had sat in her chair or on the bed, not speaking, either smirking or pouting…or was it decomposing? But they’d had conversations, about the baby, about Rory, about her damned hair. Diedre remembered trimming her nails, listening to Marla whine in her low voice…that was it…always in the low voice. And only after she was in the room in the basement. That’s when she’d started whispering. Was it possible she hadn’t been complaining? How many times had Diedre wondered why Marla’s voice had been so soft, why she’d spoken when Diedre’s back was turned, why her lips had barely moved.

Oh, God!

WAS IT POSSIBLE
?

Had she…Jesus, had she taken the kid into the house to visit a dead woman? When B.J. had complained of the smell, had it been the stench of decay and rotting flesh?

Images flashed behind her eyes. Horrible images of a decomposing body—maggots visible, flesh falling away—cut through her vision of her mother’s beautiful face…oh…oh no…Her stomach revolted, bile rising, and she was trembling inside.

“You killed her too early!” he said again, snapping Diedre back to the present. Sweat broke out on her skin and the headache, that damned excruciating pain blasted through her. “What kind of idiot are you? Marla needed to be alive until
after
you took care of the people who needed to die…Eugenia and Rory and Cherise. That was the reason you threw suspicion on her. Remember? To prove that Marla was the killer? How the hell are you going to get out of it now?”

“You mean us,” she said dully, fighting the pain. “How are we going to get out of it?”

“I should never have trusted you,” he said, rage pounding in a tic under his eye. How could he talk to her this way, this lover who now wanted to be called Jonathan? This man she slept with, made love to, loved with all of her heart? “I knew it. This was a mistake from the get-go.” He raked his hands impatiently through his hair. “What the hell were you thinking? After all the time we spent finding a way to spring her? To get our hands on the money? You go and kill her too soon!”

There it was again. The image of Marla lying dead on the floor, blood pooling from her brain. An accident…if it had actually happened. But now, Jack was saying they had planned to kill her. Her head was pounding so hard she could barely think. “This—you and me—wasn’t just about money. You and I…we’re going to get married. You’re leaving your wife for me…”

“I’m not married. What did you think this was about?”

“It was about love.”

“Oh, give me a fucking break, Diedre.”

He, like Marla, sniggered at her thoughts of love. That’s not how it had always been. He’d found her. While working as a donation solicitor at Cahill House, he had gone through old records and learned that Marla Amhurst had come to the home to have her baby and give the child up for adoption. Using the information, Jonathan located her and ultimately seduced her. Or was it the other way around? She too had been searching for her birth mother, and then this handsome, sexy, intelligent, older man had shown up. Flirting with her. Making her feel so much better after her loser of a husband, Gene, had divorced her.

He’d spent years planning it, the ultimate score. He’d even set up his son to meet Cissy, to gain him the grandson and access to both the Cahill and Amhurst fortunes. B.J. Holt stood in line to inherit millions. But Diedre had believed Jack loved her. It had started out slow, their love affair, just a little flirting over coffee, then he offered to drive her home when her car hadn’t started one night. Over time, he’d admitted that he’d known who she was, and when he came up with a way for her to meet the mother she’d never known, she leapt at the chance. Eventually, he’d suggested they help Marla escape, and together they’d hatched their plan, which now seemed hazy. All of her communication with Marla had been through her cell mate at the first prison. She and Diedre had never met until the day that the plan went into motion, and then, the first time they’d looked eye-to-eye, Marla had smiled.

They’d driven back to the city together. “You look like me,” she’d said, tilting her head and studying Diedre. Diedre had been pleased until Marla added, “Much more like me than Cissy does.” Her smile had been sincere. “Thank you.”

Diedre had felt tears welling in her eyes, and then she’d outlined the plan to Marla…how to get their hands on the Amhurst money. Rory would have to die, of course, and James up in Oregon, eventually, and then there was Cissy. Marla had balked a little at that idea, at least at first. But prison had hardened her, and Cissy had turned her back on her mother. Eventually, Marla had gone along with the idea of the killings, though, of course, she didn’t know that Jonathan had ultimately intended to blame her and either kill her or send her back to prison. Diedre had thought that she could talk him out of it by staging Marla’s death, having it look as if she were dead or on the run in Oregon, away from the Bay Area. She’d already talked to Sam, the man she’d hired to scare Cissy at the coffee shop, and he’d agreed to do whatever was necessary. Except nothing had turned out as she’d planned. Now Marla was dead.

How had she let herself believe Jonathan had ever loved her? How had she ever thought that Marla would love her as a daughter?

You’re a fool, that’s why. Just like that bitch of an adoptive mother had always said.

Now, Jonathan glared at her as if he actually hated her. “You screwed everything up. Everything. This had nothing to do with love. Ever. You and I, we were just using each other. And now, because you’re such a stupid idiot, we’re both going to go to jail for a long, long time.”

“You bastard!” she hissed, snapping.

Smack!

She slapped him. Hard. Leaving a red mark on his face.

“What the hell?”

Rage, hot and wild, exploded deep inside her, and she saw Jonathan for what he was. How had she ever thought she loved him? He was a generation older than she, a man who had never forgotten his wife, never stopped loving Jill.

“I always suspected you were nuts,” Jonathan sneered, clenching a fist.

Before she could answer, he struck, his fist crashing into her chest. Pain exploded in her ribs, the wind rushed out of her lungs, and she doubled over.

Fury rose with the speed of a demon. She looked up at him and saw the hatred glinting in his eyes. “You are such a lowlife,” she said.

“A little late for name calling,” he spat. “Now what the hell are we going to do?”

She didn’t think twice. Her purse was hanging from the bedpost. She lunged for the leather bag. In one quick movement, she reached inside and pulled out her .38.

Her heart thudded, reverberating through the pain in her skull. “I don’t know what you’re going to do,
Jonathan
,” she snarled, aiming at his heart. “But I’ve got work to do.”