Lisa Jackson - Most Likely To Die

Thank God!

“Hello?” a girl’s voice answered on the other end of the line.

“Is this Brandy?” Kristen asked in a rush, then didn’t let the girl respond. “I’m looking for Lissa, er, Melissa Delmonico. I’m her mother.”

“Oh…she, uh, left.”

“What? How?”

“Her boyfriend picked her up?”

“Her boyfriend? What boyfriend?” Kristen demanded, in a full-blown panic. “Zeke?”

“Yeah?”

“When did they leave?”

“Uh…I dunno…maybe fifteen minutes ago?”

Ross walked through the back door and Kristen sent him a look that warned him not to say a word. He had two sacks of groceries that he set on the table.

“Were they coming straight home?” Kristen asked, the girl’s vagueness making her want to tear out her hair.

“I think…so?”

“Okay, thanks.” She hung up, scared and frustrated.

“Lissa’s with Zeke again?” Ross’s voice was steel.

Kristen nodded, her mind racing.

He swore roundly. “How do you knock some sense into that kid?”

“Ross, there’s something else going on here. I think someone broke into the house. Someone who had a key.”

Quickly, she outlined what had happened since she’d returned from work. Ross’s expression turned grim, the veins in his neck stood out, and a small tic started at his temple as she handed him the doctored invitation that someone had sent her. She also told him about Aurora’s and Bella’s calls. “I haven’t called either one back yet, but I can’t concentrate on that when Lissa is…Oh, God, is that her?” She ran from the den to the kitchen where, through the window, she saw the high beams of an SUV splash against the rear of Ross’s truck.

Relief flooded through her as she spied Lissa climbing out of the passenger side, shouting something Kristen couldn’t hear, then slamming the door of the SUV. Lissa turned and stormed in through the garage, and the vehicle took off with a roar.

“Prick!” Lissa said as she stepped through the door. “Lying, cheating, useless prick!” She caught sight of her mother as she slammed the door and her face reddened. “Sorry. I was talking about Zeke.”

“You were supposed to call me,” Kristen said, so grateful to see her daughter alive and safe that she really didn’t care if Satan himself had given Lissa a ride home. “Let’s not argue about it now.”

“Did you ever give Zeke a key to this house?” Ross asked.

“What? No.” She was shaking her head as she walked to the refrigerator and opened the door.

“Anyone else?”

“Uh-uh. There’s nothing to eat.” She grabbed a bottle of water and cracked it open. “Are we gonna have dinner?”

“Soon,” Kristen said. “Now, Lissa, I think someone might have been in the house and taken some things.”

“Really? What?”

“A box from the attic.”

She looked from one parent to the other. “This is a joke, right? Who would come in here and steal some of that junk?”

“I don’t know,” Kristen said. “But someone. Dad’s going to bring you up to speed while the two of you cook dinner.”

Kristen ignored the you’ve-got-to-be-kidding look on Melissa’s face. “I’ve got some work to do, so you guys whip up something spectacular and then we’ll discuss what we’re going to do.”

“What we’re going to do?” Lissa repeated suspiciously. “What does that mean?”

“We’ll probably call the police.”

“Really?”

“Really,” Ross said as he began unloading a couple of grocery bags. “Tell you what, since you and I are on for dinner, I’ll dial the phone and you order the pizza.”

Kristen left them to argue the merits of pepperoni versus vegetarian and headed to the den. Her cell phone had died on her again, so she replugged it into the charger and sat at her desk. Bracing herself, she punched out Aurora’s number on the landline. Aurora answered on the second ring.

“Hi. It’s Kris. I got your messages.”

“What the hell is-”

“Enough already. I got a doctored invitation, too, and I didn’t send it. I wasn’t going to bother sending one to myself but it came, just the same.”

“You call that slash mark ‘doctored’? It wasn’t just a little mark, Kris, it was like someone pressed hard with a red pen, intent on making a scar. It was drawn to look like a goddamned knife wound.”

“I know, but I didn’t do it.”

“If you didn’t send them, who did?”

“That’s the point. I don’t know. I took the invitations to the post office, but I just grabbed the stack that I’d left on the table and dumped them in the mail slot. I never double-checked them. I think someone was in my house, long enough to take out information from the packets and put them into new envelopes.” She thought hard, her mind clicking ahead. “If so, the labels probably don’t match the others unless the person who did this has the database for our mailing list.”

“You think it’s someone from the committee?” Aurora was rattled.

“I don’t know who it is.” She then went on to tell Aurora everything that had happened. Aurora listened without interruption as Kristen explained about her house probably being broken into, the box of her school paraphernalia missing from the attic, and how she suspected someone was stalking her.

“Mary, Jesus, and Joseph,” Aurora murmured at the end, and Kristen imagined her making the sign of the cross over her fairly large bosom.

“I’m scared to death for my family. I’m calling the police in the morning, after I figure out who else got the mutilated invitations. You said in your phone call that it isn’t everyone on the committee who received one?”

“So far, it’s only a few of us. For example, I got one, but DeLynn didn’t. Nor did Martina, but Bella got one and so did Mandy.”

“What about Laura?”

“No. Same with April. They got the real deal. No tampering. Their pictures weren’t slashed with a red marker.”

“Probably the same marker used on the picture of Jake and me that was left on my car.”

Aurora sucked in a quick breath. “Oh, shit, you’re right. This is going from beyond weird to downright scary.”

Kristen couldn’t have agreed more. Just talking about it made her blood run cold. She thought of the person she’d seen lurking on the other side of the street. A person staring at her house. Casing the place. Because he wanted to break in and steal junk from her high school days?

Shivering, she wrapped one arm around her abdomen. “What about people who aren’t on the reunion committee? Graduates who didn’t volunteer?”

“No way of knowing unless they call one of us-you, probably, as your name is listed on the invitation. The girls who moved farther away wouldn’t have received theirs yet,” Aurora said. “Geez, Kristen, I was just talking to Lindsay, right before I got the mail. It was fun, reconnecting, y’know? Then I hung up and went to the mail and there it was. Freaked me out.”

“I know. I just don’t get what this is about. Are they mad because we’re finally getting it together and putting on the reunion?”

“You mean, you think someone’s trying to stop it from happening?”

“Maybe…or maybe…this is about Jake?”

Aurora sucked in a breath. “You think his killer’s involved?”

“No…I don’t know…But this reunion’s stirred someone up, that’s for sure. He or she has been waiting a long time. Twenty years. Now here’s his chance, his venue to make whatever psychotic statement he wants to.”

“Who would do that?”

“Someone with serious psychoses.”

“But why?”

“I’ve been asking myself that since the night I found the tape and picture in my car.” She heard a click in the receiver, indicating someone was calling in. Caller ID flashed a message that Swanson H was trying to get through. “Hey, Aurora, I’ve got to go. Haylie’s on the other line.”