Almost Dead (Lizzy Gardner #5)(75)

If you smiled and dressed up, looked as if you belonged, people believed that you did. Confidence. All you needed was a cheerful expression and a little confidence.

After work, five days a week, Aubrey picked up her kids from day care and arrived home at approximately six o’clock.

Jenny looked at her watch. It was only four. She had plenty of time. The last time she’d walked through Aubrey’s house, she’d taken her tube of toothpaste. Today, she planned to replace it. Aubrey and her husband had two separate sinks. Cluttered with lotion and feminine products, her side had been easy to identify. Jenny was certain she’d stolen the right toothpaste.

Aubrey should be dead before morning.

Jenny walked up the driveway, lifted her hand over the side gate, pulled the chain, and let herself through to the side yard. Last time she’d gone through the garage, but today she decided to see if the back door was open.

The French doors came right open. It was as if someone were waiting for her.

No alarm. No problem.

She smelled something cooking in the oven, thought that was odd, and looked around.

She could smell a roast.

Something dropped in the other room. A woman cursed.

Turn around this minute! Come back tomorrow.

Jenny took slow, careful steps out of the kitchen and into the dining room. Not too far from where she stood, Aubrey Singleton was hanging pictures . . . or at least, she was trying to hang pictures. She had a nail in her mouth, a hammer in her right hand, and she used her left hand to blindly reach around behind the little picture, trying to loop the wire or hook around the nail head.

Jenny thought about the toothpaste in her purse. She’d put a lot of work into making it look and smell just right. She’d lied to her boss and had gone to a lot of trouble to get here today. She was about to turn around and walk back the way she’d come when Aubrey dropped the picture. It was a small one and it fell to the couch without so much as a clank.

No harm done.

Except that Aubrey had leaned over to pick it up and was now looking at her with wide-eyed wonder. “Who are you?”

“You know who I am.”

The woman straightened and narrowed her eyes. “Jenny?”

Jenny smiled.

“They warned me that someone might be coming after me. I thought of you, Jenny Pickett. In my mind, you were the only one it could be, but I pushed the warning aside, didn’t even tell my husband, because I didn’t think you had it in you.”

Confident, holding her shoulders high, Jenny walked forward.

Aubrey raised the hammer, but the woman looked as if she weighed about ninety pounds. Her arm wobbled from the weight of it.

Jenny stopped and sighed. “Do you really think I came here to hurt you?”

Aubrey took a backward step and then another. “Why did you come, then?”

“I wanted to talk to you about what you did. I want to know if you feel any remorse.”

“Of course I do. We all do. We were young, Jenny. Each and every one of us would take it all back if we could go back in time.”

“Oh Aubrey.” Jenny put a hand to her heart, as though overcome—and took another step closer. “You have no idea how happy that makes me. I didn’t think any of you cared about what you did to us.”

Aubrey’s shoulders relaxed. “I wish there was something I could do to make up for it.”

“Give me the hammer, Aubrey, so we can sit down and enjoy a cup of tea together. Just knowing you would take it all back if you could is all I needed to hear.”

Aubrey played it out for a few seconds, even made it appear as if she might put the hammer down. Instead, she turned and ran for the front door.

Jenny caught up to her and wrestled the hammer from her hand. Then she swung hard and fast before the bitch could get away.

The look on Aubrey’s face when she fell to the ground said it all: You really came after me. You really got the last word, didn’t you?

“You bet I did,” Jenny said.

Having no desire to hang around, Jenny dropped the hammer inside her bag, used her foot to nudge Aubrey’s arm out of her way, then headed outside, right through the front door. She walked a block, shoulders back, head held high. After another three blocks, she sat on a bench that the community had built for people who wanted to sit and catch their breath, maybe view the beautiful lake-sized pond or feed the ducks.

Slowly, determined not to call attention to herself, she slid off the blood-splattered sweater, one sleeve at a time, leaned over and wiped the streak of blood on her right shoe. She then rolled the sweater up into a nice little ball and slid it into her purse on top of the hammer.

A kid, riding his bike on the walking path, picked up speed as he passed by, didn’t make eye contact, had obviously been told not to talk to strangers.

Ten minutes later, she climbed into her car and drove off.





CHAPTER 54

“Just like old times,” Hayley said to Jessica as they pulled up to the curb outside Chalkor’s house.

“Yeah, just like old times.”

“How’s Magnus doing?” Magnus Vitalis was a DEA agent and a man Jessica had been very fond of even before he’d thrown himself in front of her at Lizzy’s wedding and taken a bullet to the spine for his efforts.

“He’s not adjusting well,” Jessica said. “He’s angry. The doctors have told him he’ll never walk. He’s not ready to accept that prognosis.”