A High-End Finish(71)

It was a few long seconds before it occurred to me that it had grown dark while I was unconscious. Idiot! I must’ve been hit even harder than I thought. Stretched out on the cold concrete driveway, I moved my head back and forth, looking around, concentrating on my vision, trying to pick out shapes and objects. My truck. A neighbor’s house. The moon rising.

I heard a vehicle approach and tried again to sit up. The bright headlights blinded me and I moaned and rolled over onto my side. I was a mess.

A door slammed and footsteps ran toward me.

“Shannon! You here?”

I’d never been so happy to hear my father’s voice.

“Dad,” I uttered.

“Baby, what are you doing on the ground? What happened?”

I touched the side of my head. “Somebody hit me.”

“Oh, my God. My baby.” He fell onto his knees, pulled me close, and rocked me in his arms. “Who did this? Who was it?”

“I don’t know,” I whispered. “My head.”

“Hell, I’m hurting you.”

“Not you,” I insisted. “Someone hit me. Not you.”

“I’m taking you to the hospital.”

“No.” I couldn’t face answering questions from nurses and doctors and, no doubt, the police. My head pounded, my stomach was iffy, and I was just miserable enough to crave my comfy couch. “Please, Dad, let’s go home.”

He picked me up and carried me in his arms to the Winnebago. By the time I was sitting in the front seat of the huge RV, I was a little more lucid.

“Will you go back and find my purse and car keys, Dad?”

“Sure, honey.” He was gone for less than a minute and came back with my purse. “I locked up your truck. It’ll be fine here overnight.”

“Hey, Dad,” I murmured a minute later. “Do you remember passing any cars on your way here?”

He thought for a moment. “There was one black car driving pretty fast toward the highway. It looked like a little foreign job. Sporty.”

Great. Everyone I knew had a black car. But one of them stood out in my mind more than the others: Jennifer Bailey’s BMW.

I couldn’t think of anyone more likely to want to hurt me than her. And nobody was more capable of murder, in my opinion. But why?

I had to admit, Dad’s little black-car clue was weak at best because didn’t Whitney drive a groovy little black Jaguar? Her parents must’ve bought her that car, I thought, because there is no way Tommy could’ve afforded it on a cop’s salary. And wasn’t Penny’s little Miata black? Or was it blue? Heck, even Lizzie’s SUV was black. So was Mac’s car. And Emily drove a black Mini Cooper. Did anyone in this town drive a car that wasn’t black?

The pounding in my head was getting worse and I couldn’t think straight. There were plenty of people in town who had hated Jerry enough to kill him. And the same went for Wendell Jarvick. But who hated those two men—and me? And which of them drove a black car?

I had been enemies with Whitney most of my life. But if I died, who would fix her water leaks? Who would she call to unclog her toilets? No, I couldn’t believe Whitney would bother trying to kill me. But Jennifer? Definitely.

My head was spinning painfully with clues and possibilities and too many dead ends. As my father drove his unwieldy monstrosity slowly toward town, I finally slipped back into blessed unconsciousness.





Chapter Thirteen


“I can’t believe you betrayed me like this,” I muttered when I woke up and found myself laid out on a gurney. I was surrounded by a flimsy curtain in some cubicle at the urgent-care center.

“You were hit hard, honey,” Dad said, clutching my hand. “There was a lot of blood. You needed a doctor to check you out, make sure everything’s okay.”

I hadn’t seen him look this pale and anxious in years, and that frightened me almost as much as being hit in the head had.

“Okay, I get it,” I whispered, squeezing his hand as I closed my eyes. “Thanks, Dad. You’re right.”

“You know how much I love to hear those words,” he said, chuckling softly.

I smiled weakly. I hadn’t mentioned that I still felt dizzy in both my head and stomach and my eyesight was a touch blurry. So, yeah, probably a good thing he’d brought me here.

I raised my hand to my head, but I couldn’t feel a thing. “What did they do to me?”

Dad pulled my hand away gently. “They wrapped your head in a bandage. I think they gave you a shot of something, too.”

“Ah.” I sighed, then slipped under. I must’ve dozed off for a few minutes, because when I opened my eyes again, my father was gone and the person holding my hand was Police Chief Eric Jensen.

“Oh. Hi.” I slipped my hand away.

“Hi,” he said.

“Is my dad gone?”

“No, he’s waiting outside with your uncle. I wanted to try to catch you when you woke up. Do you think you can talk for a minute?”

“Yeah,” I said, my voice a little croaky. “I’m sorry I didn’t see who did it. I heard something like a branch snap or a leaf crackle behind me. That was my only warning that someone else was there. And then he hit me and I blacked out.”

“Okay.” He pulled a chair over to the gurney and sat so that his blue eyes were focused right on me. He reached for my hand again and I didn’t protest because his hand was big and warm and callused enough to feel safe and real.