Maggie Shayne - Killing Me Softly

At ten rings total, Dawn peered out from beneath the pillow. She could see, from the Caller ID feature on her television—which had been left on all night long, just as it was every night—that the call was coming from her mother. Her birth mother, not the one who’d raised her. Blackberry Inn, the screen announced.

She reminded herself that she was lucky to have found her birth mother at all, after fifteen years with each of them believing the other to be dead. She adored Beth, and had been raised beautifully by the woman she considered her mother, Julie Jones. But even though she loved Beth dearly, Dawn wasn’t ready for another conversation where every other sentence revolved around the life and times of Bryan Kendall.

Bryan, the son of Beth’s husband, Josh, had been Dawn’s first love. And she’d broken his heart when she’d left him behind in Vermont five years ago.

Hell. It didn’t seem as if Beth was going to give up until she answered, and it would be rude to just yank the line out of the jack.

Sighing, she rolled onto her side, grabbed the phone and brought it to her ear. “Hi, Beth.”

“Dawn. God, I thought I’d never get you. Are you all right? You don’t sound well.”

Dawn rolled her eyes, and reached for the water glass on the nightstand, but it was empty, and the one half full of diet cola was also half full of vodka. And it was too early in the morning for vodka.

She hadn’t needed to resort to vodka in quite a long time. But last night she’d had that feeling—that creeping, pins-and-needles-in-her-spine feeling—that told her something was coming. And that her normal bedtime dose of Ativan wasn’t going to be enough to keep it at bay this time.

She’d thought, at the time, she’d been sensing that the dead were going to start talking to her again—asking for her help, pestering her, the way they had before she’d run away from her life and her gift and her family. And Bryan, her first love.

Now she thought maybe all she’d been sensing was the approach of this phone call. Which was, after all, likely to be almost as unpleasant as the “gift” she’d turned her back on. “I’m fine,” she said. “Why so urgent?”

“You’ve got to come home, Dawnie. You’ve got to come home right now.”

Dawn blinked and looked at the clock on her cluttered nightstand. It, and the framed photo of her and Bryan, arm in arm, in happy teenage puppy love, were the only two things there that really belonged. Beside those were the empty water glass, the partially ingested vodka diet, a box of tissues, an empty prescription bottle and another one that wasn’t empty, the bowl of Chinese noodles she’d had for dinner and an open package of peanut M&M’s.

She had to shove some of the junk aside to see what time it was, and as soon as she did, she felt a lot less guilty for her reluctance to answer the phone. “It’s first thing on a Saturday. Is someone dead?”

She was kidding, being sarcastic and snotty, and feeling totally justified in both, until Beth said, “Yes. Someone is dead.”

Dawn sat up straight and blurted his name as everything inside her turned to ice. “Bryan—”

“Bryan’s…he’s fine. No. He’s not fine. His dad is with him, and he’s physically fine. At least, I think he is.”

“Good God, Beth, will you just tell me who’s dead already? I’m having heart failure here!”

“A girl. Her name is Bette—Bettina something or other. She was…she was murdered last night. Apparently in Bryan’s house. In his…in his bed.”

“What?”

“He had a party last night. Had too much to drink. Woke up this morning to find this girl dead in his bed.”

“Drugs? God, that’s going to mess up Bryan’s career big-time. Or was it…?”

“She was murdered.”

Dawn swore in a way she’d never before done in front of either one of her mothers.

“Dawn, they’ve taken Bryan in for questioning. Josh just called from the station, and he says it doesn’t look good.”

“Doesn’t look good?” Dawn frowned at the phone as if it were deliberately being vague. “Doesn’t look good? As in, they actually think he did it?”

“I don’t know. I guess…I guess so.”

“Well, they can’t! That just doesn’t make any sense,” Dawn said. “Bry’s a cop, for crying out loud.”

“Yes, a cop who’s been suspended for the past month.”

“What, still? All because he shot that guy?”

“He’s been cleared of any wrongdoing, but he was required to meet with the department psychiatrist to be sure he wasn’t suffering from post-traumatic stress. She just gave him the all clear, and he was scheduled to return to work on Monday. Hence, the party last night.”

“He was celebrating,” Dawn said.

“Apparently.”

Dawn closed her eyes, shook her head, offering a token argument, because she couldn’t seem to stop her self. Force of habit, she presumed. “I don’t know what good my coming back would do, Beth.”

“Yes, you do,” Beth whispered. “You know you do.”

“Did he…ask for me?”

“He needs you, Dawn. If they don’t arrest him—”

“Arrest him?”

“If they don’t arrest him, Josh is going to bring him home. Dawnie, you know you can help. Even without the…the ability you inherited from your father—”

“There is no ability.” She didn’t bother reminding Beth that any mention of Dawn’s long-dead father was strictly off-limits. The man had been a powerful medium—as well as a murderer. His gift and his mental illness, so twisted up in his mind that he couldn’t tell the real voices from the imaginary ones. The ones that told him to kill. With his dying breath, he’d passed his gift on to his teenage daughter, promising to return to her. A promise he’d kept, and one that had sent her running across the continent to escape.

And she had escaped.

“The dead don’t talk to me anymore, Beth. It’s…it’s gone.” Thanks to AA—Absolut and Ativan in her case.

“I don’t believe that,” Beth said softly. “I know it drove your father insane—and I know that scares you, Dawn. So I hope, for your sake, it’s true. But even without that, Dawn, you can help. You and Bryan were like—you were like Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys.”

“One Hardy Boy.”

“The way you figured out what was going on in Blackberry five years ago when your father found me here—when he thought God was telling him to kill me… If it hadn’t been for you and Bryan…”

“That was five years ago, Beth. A lot of water has gone under the bridge since then. Bryan’s the one who went on to become a cop. I just fix cars—”

“You restore classic cars for collectors. Don’t undersell yourself.”

“Yeah, well, it’s a far cry from crime solving.”

“He needs you, Dawn. And I need you. I’m scared. Josh sounded awful on the phone. Bryan’s his son, and this is going to be hell on him, no matter how it comes out. I need to be there for him, Dawn, but I’m scared, too. I need you. The family needs to face this together. Please, baby, please. It’s time you came home.”

“There are just…so many ghosts.”

“Yeah. Well, now there’s one more.”

“Beth—”

“Dawn,” Beth said, and her tone had changed from pleading to the voice of absolute authority. “I didn’t raise you—didn’t even get to know you until you were practically grown. But I am your mother and I’m speaking to you as a mother right now. There’s a ticket waiting for you at the airport. Your flight leaves at 1:16 p.m., your time. Get up, pack a bag, call your boss and get your ass home. I’m not asking you. I’m telling you.”

Dawn closed her eyes. “I’m a grown-up now, Beth. You can’t tell me what to do.”