Scared To Death (Live to Tell #2)(60)

Yet someone found them.

That means they weren’t just being watched and photographed. Someone must have been listening to their private conversations. Someone heard them talking about the trip in their kitchen, or over the phone. Either the line is tapped, or the house is bugged. Maybe both.

She has to call Brett and tell him—

No! You can’t call Brett. You can’t call Maman, either.

You can’t call anyone. You can’t talk about it to anyone, not even Renny.

Someone might be listening right now. Someone might hear her shallow breathing, her heart pounding like crazy, blood roaring through her veins…

“Mommy?”

“Shh!”

Whoever was here might have wanted her to think he was leaving. But he might still be here, hiding, watching, listening.

Clutching Renny’s shoulder, she glances warily around the foyer.

Dear God, someone is there—standing right behind her.

Elsa cries out—then realizes it’s her own reflection in an enormous gilded mirror. She looks like hell: hair straggly from the rain, pupils dilated in sheer terror, yesterday’s mascara rendering her gaunt, almost otherworldly.

“Mommy!”

“It’s okay, Renny.” She hugs her shaken daughter. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

But someone is sure as hell trying to scare her—and doing a damned good job of it.



Arriving home after an agonizing day of going through the motions at the office, still with no word from Mike, Brett is relieved to see that Meg’s car is no longer parked in the driveway next door. He’s definitely not up for another round of Q&A.

Reminded that Elsa’s car is still sitting at the Sunoco station—or, by now, in a tow yard somewhere—he wonders again about that Spider-Man toy she’d found lying in the parking lot. Even if it had fallen out of the car…

What if Elsa herself had been the one who was carrying it around? Caught in the throes of acute stress disorder, she’d done that back in the beginning, for months after their son disappeared. She’d clung fiercely to that toy, even talked to it, as if it were Jeremy himself. The day she’d tried to kill herself, when he’d found her unconscious, she’d been clutching the toy in her hands.

So, what? You think she lied to you about how it might have gotten into the car and onto the ground next to it?

No. Her terror was too real. She didn’t lie.

But maybe her subconscious mind is up to something again. Losing touch with reality. Dissociative behavior. Maybe learning of Jeremy’s death really did push her over the edge, and Brett was just too distracted or busy to notice the signs.

But it isn’t just that she thought someone was in Renny’s room, or that she thought she saw a footprint, and found that Spider-Man by the car.

What about the envelope of pictures?

Wait a minute.

She wasn’t in any of them.

Could she have taken them, and mailed them, herself?

It would mean his wife is seriously mentally ill.

No. I can’t accept that. I won’t.

He strides toward the house, casting a wary eye across the surrounding landscape, relieved to see nothing unusual. It isn’t until he’s reached the front door that he spots the small rectangle of paper stuck to the frame.

Heart racing, he grabs it.

Mr. and Mrs. Cavalon: I’ll be Renata’s new caseworker, and I came by this afternoon to introduce myself. Please give me a call to schedule a meeting at your earliest convenience.

The ink is wet and smeared in spots, particularly at the bottom, making the scrawled signature difficult to read. It looks like Melissa—or perhaps Melvin?—Jackson, or Johnson. The phone number is legible, though.

Brett hurriedly unlocks the door and shoves the keys into his suit coat pocket along with the note, wondering why the new social worker didn’t just call in advance to introduce herself.

Then again—why would she call? Pop-in visits are a necessary evil when it comes to foster care, and a heads-up would obviously ruin the spontaneity.

After stepping over the threshold, Brett locks the dead bolt behind him and leans against the door, head tilted back, eyes closed.

The threat of an unexpected visit from Roxanne was bad enough. Now another new caseworker breathing down their necks? That’s the last thing he and Elsa need right now.

What they do need right now is help. But Mike seems to have fallen off the face of the earth, and the only other person to whom he can consider reaching out is Elsa’s therapist, Joan.

There must be some kind of patient privacy protocol, but he can only hope that Elsa signed a release in the beginning that would allow him access to her mental health records.

He has to call Joan. He knows he does. He dreads the thought of it, but it’s time.

He pulls his cell phone from his pocket and checks to make sure he didn’t somehow miss a call. Nope.

He finds Mike’s number and hits redial, wanting to give it one more try before he gets in touch with Joan.

This time, someone answers the phone with a gruff-sounding hello.

“Mike?”

“No,” the unfamiliar voice says.

“Sorry, I must have the wrong—”

“Are you looking for Mike Fantoni?”

“Yes…”

“This is the right phone. Who is this?”