Page 76 of Almost Dead (The Cahills 2)

“What decisions? I just want to hear what you have to say, but if you’re not interested, then I’m sorry to have bothered you.”

“No! I mean, of course we should talk. Tonight would be fine,” Cherise agreed quickly, her mind spinning ahead of her tongue. She couldn’t afford to squander this opportunity. She felt something wasn’t right about this, but she couldn’t put her finger on what it was. There was a chance that Cissy was up to something. But what? “What time?”

“You name it.”

“How about seven?” That way she could call Donald, tell him what was up, and have him let her know the best way to handle Cissy.

“I’ll come to your place. If you need to change anything, call me on my cell. I’m going to be out of the house all day.”

“Okay, I’ve got your number,” Cherise said, knowing that her phone had saved the number.

“Perfect.” Cissy hung up, and Cherise called her back, just to make sure.

“Hello?” Cissy answered, sounding just as raspy.

“Oh, Cissy, I was just checking to see that you know how to get here. Do you have the address?”

“Gran had it, and I’ve got her Rolodex. She never did trust computers.”

That sounded legit. Still, Cherise wished Donald were here rather than in Sacramento with a group planning a mission to Mexico. She should just say ‘no’ and insist Cissy wait, but as up and down as that girl was, Cherise knew she had to act fast, strike while the iron was hot. “Well, great, I’ll see you then.” She hung up; then, because she still felt weird about it, she called Cissy’s home, where Tanya informed her that Cissy was out for a while.

Everything checked out. So why was she being so paranoid?

Cherise gave herself a talking to. It looked like Cissy’s guilt was finally getting to her. Good, Cherise thought with a smile as she lit the candles in the living room, the same as she did every twilight. It just made the house so much cheerier. Next she sent up several prayers—one of thanks and one for Donald’s safety. Everything in her life was getting better.

So why did she still feel so nervous?

“You think your mother was here?” Paterno asked. Cissy Holt had called from her grandmother’s house and sworn she’d seen her mother. Paterno hadn’t wasted a second. He’d driven straight to the mansion on Mt. Sutro, where Cissy, arms wrapped around her torso, had met him in the living room, just a few steps from the foyer where she’d found her grandmother’s body.

He’d been to a lot of crime scenes, seen mutilated corpses, bloodied bodies, witnessed the most bizarre acts of cruelty done to one human being by another. But never had he felt such a sense of malevolence as he did in this house, not a feeling of out-and-out brutality, more a sensation of cold, calculating, psychological horror.

That’s what was happening here.

Marla was purposely terrorizing her.

And it pissed him off, even more than the keying of his car had…or, well, at least as much. He was still enraged at the dickwad who had scarred his beloved Caddy.

Cissy had told him a bizarre story about arriving here—how she’d thought she was alone, how she’d spied Marla Cahill in the doorway. She’d almost thought she was imagining it but for the smell of perfume in her car and the screwdriver jammed into the lock on the electronic gate.

Paterno, using a flashlight, had looked around. He bagged and tagged the screwdriver, looked for footprints in the earth, but the rain had pretty much taken care of anything solid. He wondered why Marla would risk coming here. Had she thought she could hide out? Why hadn’t she spoken to Cissy? And what was the deal with the elevator being sent to the second floor?

Nothing made sense.

He called Quinn, and they decided to ask the crime lab to come and look for clues. Eventually Tallulah Jefferson and Roger Billings, another tech, arrived. They made short work of the place, dusted the front door for prints, searched again for footprints, and collected what little evidence there was, even dusting Cissy’s car and vacuuming it in hopes of finding trace evidence.

“So has anything else strange been happening?” Paterno asked.

“Everything seems…off,” Cissy revealed. It was dark now; the rain had stopped, but water was still running down the hillside and into the grate in the middle of the driveway. “I’ve misplaced some things.”

“Such as?”

She seemed embarrassed. “Nothing valuable. My cell phone, a silver cup that Gran gave B.J. when he was born, and…oh, and my hairbrush, but I think they might all be at the house. There were so many people there the day of the funeral, things got moved.”

“Your cell?”

“It was turned off. I thought it was in my purse, but maybe it fell out. Everything else was there. I checked. Credit cards, ID, and cash. Right where I left them.

Only the phone’s missing. I’ve called, thinking someone might have found it and would answer, but it goes right to voice mail. And no one’s called home to the landline which is listed in the cell’s phone book, in case someone found it and wanted to get hold of me. It’s a real pain, let me tell you. That’s where I store everyone’s number.”

---