Two days later, Kristen parked her car in the garage, then walked out to the mailbox to pick up the usual assortment of junk mail and bills. There, between an offer for a low-interest rate credit card and her Visa statement, was the invitation to the reunion. She was surprised because she hadn’t bothered to mail one to herself; she’d kept the prototype in her laptop and figured why waste the stamp. But there it was, big as life, addressed to Kristen Daniels Delmonico.
“What the devil?” she asked, as she walked into the house…the quiet house. “Lissa? Ross? I’m home,” she called as she headed down the hallway.
Odd…no one save for Marmalade was inside.
“What’s up with that?” she asked, and then remembered that her cell phone’s battery had run out after her long conversation with Rachel and she’d forgotten her charger. Now she fished the phone from her purse, snapped it into the charger on her desk, and as the phone went through its machinations of coming to life in a series of tinkling sounds, she found the letter opener in her desk drawer.
“You have seven new messages,” the computer voice informed her after she entered her password.
“Seven?” she repeated, holding the phone between her shoulder and ear to free up both hands so she could slice open the reunion packet. Marmalade hopped onto the desk and sat squarely in the pile of mail. “See how popular I am?”
The cat ignored her and began cleaning herself.
“Yeah, yeah. A lot you care.”
“First message,” the computer voice stated.
“Mom, it’s Lissa. I’m going over to Brandy’s house to work on a project for German. Either she’ll bring me home or I’ll call for a ride.”
Click.
That sounded safe enough. Kristen sincerely hoped that her daughter was where she said she’d be.
The machine announced, “Next message.”
“Hi, Kris. Hey, I’m running a little late, okay? But I’ll be home by seven. If you want, I can pick up something for dinner. Or we could go out, or whatever. Love you.”
Ross’s voice enveloped her. The words, uttered so quickly, touched her heart. Don’t go there, not yet, she warned herself as she pulled the thick, folded papers from the envelope.
“Next message.”
“Is this your idea of some kind of joke?” Aurora demanded, her voice shaking. “I just got my invitation and surprise, surprise. What the hell were you thinking, Kris? Call me!”
Kristen stared at the phone, then opened the folded pages of her own invitation. Everything was as it should be except there was no letter of explanation signed by her, and her picture, the one she’d copied and cut from the yearbook to be used as part of her name tag at the reunion, had been altered. A harsh red line streaked across her face.
Her lips parted in shock. The threat was clear: someone intended to do her harm.
“Next message.”
The phone beeped. A hang-up. Kristen dropped the invitation as if burned.
“Next message.”
Oh, no.
“Hi, Kristen, this is Bella. I got my invitation today and…well, it’s really, really weird. Some of the other girls on the committee got identical ones and I just don’t understand. Call me back.”
“Next message.”
Kristen was shaking.
Aurora said coolly, “Okay, Kris, I talked to other people on the committee. It seems I’m not the only one who got the marked-up invitation. Bella and Mandy got one, too. But the rest of the committee, as far as I know, didn’t. What the hell’s going on? Call me!”
The next two calls were hang-ups, but caller ID indicated that Aurora had been dialing her every fifteen minutes.
Staring down at her own scratched senior photo, Kristen thought she might be sick. Who had done this and when? She thought of the invitations that had been left on her table for three days. Had they been tampered with?
Had someone been inside her house?
She nearly fell into the desk chair, her mouth dry, her heart pounding. She picked up the phone to dial Aurora when she stopped and listened.
Was she alone?
She thought hard, adrenaline kicking in. She didn’t have a weapon in the house. Neither she nor Ross owned any kind of gun. Quietly, she walked to the kitchen, reached for the butcher knife, but it was missing. Probably in the dishwasher. She didn’t have time to search and settled for a serrated, long-bladed knife from the drawer, then saw her reflection in the window-a pale ghostlike image of herself with a huge knife, just like one of those idiotic girls in a teen slasher movie.
Too bad. She needed something to protect herself. Moving softly, she walked from room to room, looking in closets, under beds, in any corner where someone could possibly hide. Her heartbeat thrummed in her ears as she searched every inch of the house. She’d nearly satisfied herself that she was alone when she remembered the attic.
Though the temperature was cool, sweat broke out on her back. Don’t be a fool, she told herself, but walked to the cord hanging from the ceiling anyway, pulling hard. The stairs unfolded into the hallway. The only other access to the attic was through a small window in a gable of the house, so Kristen told herself it was unlikely anyone would be inside. Still, her heart was thundering as she mounted the narrow steps, her muscles stretched tight.
She poked her head up slowly, only to eye level.
Thump!
Kristen gasped and nearly fell off the ladder when she heard the telltale scratch of little claws scraping across the floor. A damned mouse. That was all.
Slowly she stepped upward and flipped on the lights. No one was hiding in the dusty shadows. No dark figure cowered in a corner. No deranged psycho was crouched behind the antique chest of drawers she’d never gotten around to refinishing.
No…everything was fine.
She was about to snap off the lights when her gaze swept over the stack of boxes of old textbooks and high-school paraphernalia she’d searched through.
One box was missing.
No. That couldn’t be right.
Again her heart began pounding crazily and a lightning chill raced down her spine. She gazed around wildly, her eyes searching one corner to the next. Surely she’d misplaced the damned thing…That was it. She’d tucked it somewhere else.
Frantically she scoured the room, not wanting to believe that someone had actually violated her privacy and sneaked into her home.
But the box that had contained all her memorabilia from St. Elizabeth’s was gone. She could still see the square shape in the dust where it had sat for so many years.
Sweet-Mother-Mary.
Who was this sicko? What did he want? What if he became violent? Images of Jake Marcott’s white-faced body flashed through her mind. She remembered his blood-soaked tux. Lindsay’s ruined dress. The pool of red oozing around the base of the oak tree and statue.
Backing toward the stairs, she could almost hear Lindsay’s ear-splitting, terrorized scream echoing through the rafters. She thought of the mutilated picture of Jake and her at the dance, the bloodcurdling scream on the tape, and now the marred invitations to the reunion.
Some sick pervert had been in her house.
Without breaking a window or knocking down a door.
Someone had a key, and now no one was safe.
Oh, God, Lissa! Was she really studying at a friend’s house, or had she been coerced into calling? Had she been kidnapped? No, no, no!
Fear storming through her, Kristen flew down the stairs.
Carrying the heavy box, the killer slipped into her private lair, deep in the locked, forgotten basement at St. Elizabeth’s. It had been a long, hard, but oh so rewarding day. Everything had gone perfectly. As planned.
She set the box on a desk, then, once the door was shut behind her, lit the kerosene lantern. In the flickering illumination she searched through the items in their cardboard container. Little trinkets, photos, even Kristen’s essays and diploma were in the box. She thrilled at the personal things, playing with the tassel from the mortarboard of the graduation cap and pulling out the long gold honor cords that Kristen, as a member of the Honor Society, had worn at graduation.