disappear.”
He wanted to say that every stalker was different, but what did he know? “You want me to follow you to your sister’s house?”
She raised an eyebrow. “Why would you follow me there?”
“It’s where you’re staying, right?”
“No, Lisa’s nine months’ pregnant. She’s only been married a year and is busy building a home for a new husband and stepdaughter. There’s a big difference between me coming for a short visit and me moving in. Trust me, she doesn’t need another roommate.”
“Okay, so where are you staying?” Vince asked.
“Billy’s letting me rent his mother’s upstairs apartment. It’s the same one Lisa lived in before she married Alex. I just moved in this morning.”
“Maybe you should call Alex? He’d come over.”
Tamara shook her head. “Lisa doesn’t need to be alone, and this is not their problem.”
It wasn’t his problem either, but as he followed her off the steps of the porch and then to her car, he couldn’t shake the feeling that somehow her problem was about to become his problem.
“I’ll follow you home,” he said, opening her car door.
“I’d appreciate that.”
It was well after ten when he finally parked his car behind Tamara’s, and the nighttime sky offered little in the way of light. The streetlights, however, beamed a halfhearted welcome. Lydia’s was the biggest house on the street. It also had the most character. It had, at one time, been his home away from home. A place he could go if things got a little difficult at home.
Stepping out of his truck, he walked leisurely over to Tamara’s little red Jaguar. The sound of country music carried on the wind. She turned the car off before gathering up some papers and her purse plus a couple of shopping bags. He took the bags from her, half expecting her to protest, but maybe both the warnings and the mouse had subdued her.
He followed her to the bottom of an outdoor staircase. When Lydia had moved into the brick house, she had converted the upstairs to an apartment complete with its own entrance. Vince’s mother said Lydia not only knew how to manage her money but how to create ways to make money.
Vince’s mother was too busy trying to manage her sons to manage her money. When Vince was ten, his father had abandoned the family. That same year Vince’s older brothers had moved out. For the next two years, Vince and his mother had moved from one apartment to another. They hadn’t had much money. During that time, his mother had remarried, had Vince’s little brother Jimmy, and got divorced. Vince became the man of the family.
When they got to the top of the stairs, Tamara unlocked the door, disappeared inside for a moment and then returned to relieve him of the bags.
“Thanks,” she murmured softly. “I was getting a little spooked back there at the church. You made some pretty bad moments not so horrible. I do appreciate your help.” Then she smiled and closed the door.
Leaving him outside, feeling as if he’d just missed an opportunity he hadn’t even realized was offered. That realization was followed by the certainty that his initial attraction to her flowing red hair was really nothing.
Nope, it was her smile that did him in.
For the first time in months, Tamara fell into bed without going through a paranoid routine of checking her front door’s lock and all the windows about a dozen times.
Tonight when she crawled into bed, her last thought was I’m tired. She didn’t make it to I wish I could fall asleep. Instead, she fell asleep.
For two whole minutes.
And then, her eyes went to the clock by her bedside.
Midnight.
It had all started at midnight. William Massey’s first phone call. Tamara burrowed under the blankets and, even though her clock didn’t make any noise, she covered her ears.
She almost wished she could blame Massey, but tonight what kept her from sleeping was the sudden realization that most likely Massey wasn’t involved with the threatening warnings she had received.
No, he struck at midnight.
On Saturday morning, Vince drove to Tamara’s apartment to check on her.
Her car was gone. There was no cause for worry, he thought. He headed for the church. But her car wasn’t there either. Okay, a slight cause for worry. He checked the only other place he could think of—her sister’s house. She wasn’t there. Finally, he spotted her car. It was the first time he’d ever felt relief at finding who he was looking for at the police station.
Checking his watch, he grimaced. Today was pretty much mapped out thanks to a promise he made his mother to help his great-uncle Drew. He turned his truck toward what used to be the outskirts of town.
Vince pulled into the dirt driveway leading up to his uncle’s trailer. Drew opened the front door once Vince started taking things out of the bed of his truck. Slowly, Drew stepped down onto his front step, glared and spit on the ground. “What are you doing, boy?”
In his younger days, according to those who remembered, Drew had been over two hundred pounds, six foot two and a contender with attitude. Now, past eighty, Drew was a walking advertisement for skin and bones and bad attitude.
Drew knew exactly why Vince had shown up this morning.
Vince answered anyway. “I’m cleaning up your yard. You only have thirty days, remember, before you start getting hefty fines.”
Drew clutched at the screen door. It kept him steady. “I’ll shoot anyone who comes on my land in thirty days.”
Sad thing was, Vince almost believed the old man. “Uncle Drew, just let me take care of this and then you won’t need to worry.”
Like his uncle had once been, Vince was over six foot, weighed just over two hundred pounds and had attitude. The difference was, Vince had learned to control his attitude. Not that a good attitude was helping to deal with Drew today.
Even with his missing weight, stooped height and outward frailty, Drew’s voice still had a guttural edge. “Ain’t worried. Don’t need any help. Git.”
“I’m not gitting.” Vince didn’t move, and Drew stomped into the trailer—no doubt heading to the phone to call Vince’s mother. He wouldn’t get far there. She was terrified at the thought of Drew winding up homeless and showing up on her doorstep.
Mom still had Jimmy at home, and right now Jimmy was at what his mother called an awkward stage. He still needed approval but insisted he could make his own decisions. From what Mom said, most of Jimmy’s decisions right now were wrong.
Vince wasn’t too worried. He’d survived puberty.
Come to think of it, maybe Vince should have a talk with Jimmy.
If nothing else, getting Jimmy out here to help pull weeds might be an opportunity that benefited both of them. Vince could pay Jimmy, and Jimmy could start saving for the car he wanted. One brief phone call later, Vince knew that idea was a bust.
Even at age sixteen, Jimmy was terrified of Uncle Drew.
Vince started pulling the weeds growing past his knees in the front yard. Every twenty minutes or so, as perfectly timed as a cuckoo on a clock, Drew would open the screen door, curse and spit and then retreat.
Things got even more interesting a few hours later when Miles Pynchon, minister of the Main Street Church, pulled up in a fairly new pickup and shouted, “Need some help?”
“I’ve got a handle on this,” Vince said. “You might not want your sons to hear what my uncle Drew has to say.”
“They’ve