Page 80 of I Know She Was There

“Hello, Caroline,” said Tim, stepping out of the galley kitchen. “You’re a hard woman to hang on to.”

“What the hell does that mean?” I snapped. “You never had any intention of holding on to me.” But fear was rising from my clenched gut, quickly overtaking annoyance.

“Not until tonight.” He chuckled, but it sounded mean rather than lighthearted. “That’s changed. Now I’m taking both of you.”

“Taking us?” I sneered. “Taking us where?”

“To a much better place.”

CHAPTER41

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 25

Iwas back in the basement with the dead body on one side of me and Mary on the other. It was well after midnight. The start of a new day whose dawn I feared I’d never see. Although Mary and I each had our wrists bound behind our backs, Tim hadn’t gagged me this time. He’d even removed the cloth from my neighbor’s mouth.

It was incredibly dark, and I didn’t hear police sirens arriving. Damn Jane Brockton. I’d been a fool to think she’d help me. The police weren’t on their way to us. Nobody was. My eyes darted around the dank enclosed space, seeing very little, yet something about the basement itself wasn’t making sense to me. My mind was such a jumbled mess by now that I wasn’t surprised. My whole body ached, and I was exhausted. I heard Mary breathing heavily beside me.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered to her.

“Yes, she’s sorry she’s such a nutjob,” sneered Tim, turning on his flashlight and pointing it from Mary’s eyes to mine and back again. “And I’m sorry you’re such an interfering old lush. You should have let me get the info I needed out of you the old-fashioned way. I’d have let you drink to your heart’s content, and as soon as you returned the financial records you stole from me, I had even bigger plans for you, involving a handle of vodka.”

“Those are Caroline’s financial records I stole, not yours.”

“Or yours,” he snapped. “I need to know where that paperwork is, and you’re going to tell me, or I promise to make things very painful for you.”

“That’s why you kept sneaking into Caroline’s house? To get your hands on the documents from her mother’s estate?”

“The ones with Lilith’s authentic signatures, which couldn’t be contested in a court of law,” said Tim.

Mary cackled. “Took you long enough to figure out I had them. I thought you were smarter than that.” In the flashlight’s glow I could make out Mary grinning as she eyed my husband, whose brows had lowered menacingly over his eyes. He looked awful, as though he’d sweat buckets.

“So, youdidsteal my inheritance.” I piped up to take Tim’s rancor off Mary. My voice sounded weary. The man never missed an opportunity to disappoint me. “How predictable.”

“The problem with you, Caroline, is that you’re so damned unpredictable. I can never guess what you’ll do next. The best place for you was at the institute. Since you had no money, you’d have become a ward of the state.”

“Just stop talking, Tim. I don’t care about what you have to say.” Something was steadily creeping over me. Something like hopelessness. I glanced at the slight, still body slumped next to me. I’d finally found the woman I’d seen in the window. Staring at the dark cascade of hair covering her face, I recalled how graceful she’d looked dancing with Matt. “This poor woman. How could you just kill her?”

“I haven’t done that, but I should.” Tim kicked out, the toe of his shoe connecting with the woman’s shin. She was jolted awake, a muffled moan escaping through the gag still in her mouth.

I flinched, gasping as I jerked toward Mary and inched sideways until I was nearly in my neighbor’s lap. What the hell was going on? Unable to take my eyes off the woman, it suddenly occurred to me what hadn’t seemed right about the basement: there was no stench of death surrounding what I’d assumed was a corpse stashed down there for weeks.

Tim reached out and removed the cloth from her mouth. She flinched and jerked her chin toward the shadowy wall when Tim angled his light on her torso, revealing a dark fleece pullover with the splashy Patagonia insignia plastered onto the front. His light trailed to shiny black leggings and black Balenciaga running shoes, which had to have set her back a couple grand. I’d seen theHousewiveswearing those. My initial relief that she’d not been fatally wounded morphed into confusion when she whipped her face in my direction and looked at me; features I’d seen for the first time just hours before.Annie Connolly.

“You’re not her,” I said, hearing the wonder in my own voice. “Not the woman I saw in the window. You’re the lawyer dating Tim... and Jeffrey Trembly?”

“I don’t know what you mean.” We locked eyes in the flashlight’s ambient light, a mixture of defiance and fear in hers.

“Yes, you do, Annie,” snarled Tim. “We had it all set up until you ruined everything—and with some moron who barely supports himself by reporting on the thingseveryone elsein the world is doing.” He spotlighted Annie’s face in his light beam. “Caroline, meet the bitch who embezzled our funds.” He angled the light into my eyes. “Annie, meet crazy.”

She didn’t acknowledge the introduction. To Tim, she said, “How did you find me?”

“Just followed my nutty wife. I didn’t know what she was up to, but I was pleasantly surprised to discover she now fancies herself a private detective. She led me right to the house you were hiding in.”

“I owe you nothing, Tim. I simply investigated ways for you to get your hands on your wife’s money. I acted in good faith when Caroline here”—she angled her head my way—“entered the cuckoo factory.”

“I saw the swanky furniture in Tim’s apartment,” I said, unable to stop myself. What was I doing? The last thing I wanted to do was to support Tim in any way, shape, or form.

“I’d sold my house when Ray and I decided to separate. I needed somewhere to put my belongings. That was my only mistake. When I returned to Tim’s for my stuff, he showed up, beat the crap out of me, and called the movers, telling them not to come over.”

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