Dead Before Dark Read online

She touches her baby’s face to make sure the fever hasn’t come back. No—she’s over the worst of it: her first cold.

  Cam tiptoes into the hall and closes the door to the baby’s room, right next door to Tess’s room. If only little Grace would sleep as soundly as her big sister does.

  Teenagers, Cam knows, are biologically disposed to sleeping in. But half past noon—which is what time Tess came downstairs yesterday—is a little extreme, even for a weekend.

  Of course, Tess was then up until all hours last night, rattling noisily around the house and waking the baby after her midnight feeding.

  As a result, Cam threatened to wake Tess at the crack of dawn today—if only to ensure that she’ll be good and tired tonight.

  Then again, it’s nice to have the house quiet, all to herself for a change. Maybe she’ll let Tess sleep just a little longer.

  Cam pads back downstairs in her robe and slippers and wonders whether to bother making a pot of coffee. She got out of the habit for all those months when she was pregnant and she and Mike were separated—and got back into it when he moved back home, especially after the baby came.

  Grace is a fussy baby, and a light sleeper, snoozing only for a few hours at a time even now that she’s over three months old. The pediatrician said she’s no longer waking in the night because she’s hungry, but Cam isn’t about to let her lie there and cry.

  So she continues to get up around the clock, and whenever she does, she feeds her daughter—because the baby always takes it and maybe the doctor is wrong.

  Standing in her big, beautiful kitchen—stainless and granite and custom cherry cabinetry, all appreciated daily and a far cry from the dingy apartments where she was raised by a single father—Cam yawns deeply and surveys the coffeemaker.

  It seems like so much trouble to brew a whole pot just for one person.

  Mike is away, skiing in Utah with his parents, brothers, and their families. Cam and the girls were supposed to go with them, but then Grace got sick, and the pediatrician thought the plane trip might be painful for her ears with all the congestion. Tess, who ordinarily would have jumped at the chance to go skiing, jumped instead at the chance to stay home and “help.” Cam has no illusion there. Her daughter wasn’t looking forward to being away from her boyfriend for a week. Now she doesn’t have to.

  Mike, too, would have stayed behind, but Cam wouldn’t let him. How could she? His family’s annual February family trip was, last year, the bone of contention that ultimately triggered their marital separation. Trouble had been simmering for years, though: a bitter brew of resentment, secrets, and booze.

  Cam drank to block out the visions that had tormented her since childhood: visions of people, mostly kids, in danger. She didn’t dare tell anyone, not even Mike, afraid he would decide she was nuts, just like her mother had been, and that he would leave her—just like her mother had done.

  It had been hard enough for Mike to defy his father’s expectations and marry a girl like her in the first place. Staying in the marriage, despite Cam’s drinking and the labyrinth she’d constructed to protect her secret, wasn’t easy for him.

  Now the walls have come down, and she hasn’t had a drop of liquor in almost a year, and although the troubling visions continue to pop up, she deals with them—with Mike’s support and understanding.

  Her marriage is back on track. Not perfect, not easy, but working for them both—much, Cam assumes, to her father-in-law’s dismay.

  Mike’s father has never liked Cam—never liked anyone, really, as far as she can tell, but her family background made her lower than low on his list. Michael Hastings, Senior, was hardly thrilled when his son married a Jersey girl with a hard-living bar band rocker for a father and a mother who had disappeared onto the streets of Camden, New Jersey, when her younger daughter was barely out of diapers.

  Last summer, Cam found out what happened to her mother after she left them. She now knows where Brenda Neary lived—and where she died.

  But the nagging questions about what had happened to Cam’s mother were almost immediately replaced with more disturbing questions about her sister.

  Revisiting Ava’s death after all these years—in such a troubling manner—came completely out of left field. But Cam doesn’t doubt Lucinda Sloan’s claim that her beautiful, capable older sister—who had everything to live for, and who promised never to leave Cam after their mother did—didn’t really kill herself.

  She does believe that Ava was murdered.

  Difficult as it was to face the media spotlight in the wake of Tess’s encounter with a homicidal lunatic last summer, Cam was hopeful that it might lead to the truth about Ava. That somebody, somewhere, would recognize her picture on television. That Ava’s fate, too, would be laid to rest.

  They did hear from a couple of people who had known Ava at NYU. Cam and Lucinda had spoken to all of them; while they expressed how shocked they had been by her suicide, no one had solid information indicating that it had been anything else.

  There were false leads, too. More than a few crackpots came out of the woodwork. Now, months later, there has been nothing at all. After getting her hopes up, Cam has come to accept that she’ll probably never find out who was responsible for her sister’s death.

  She’s grateful to know, at least, that it wasn’t Ava herself. That Ava hadn’t broken her promise never to leave Cam.

  Not like her mother.

  Not like her father, Ike, who did his best to raise her, but who was more attached to the band and the bottle than he was to being a dad.

  Not like Mike.

  “You have some serious abandonment issues,” her marriage therapist told her in a recent session. “Everyone you’ve ever depended on has left you at one time or another.”

  Even Mike.

  Of course he came back, and they’re in a good place now—better than ever before—but there will always be a nagging fear, in the back of Cam’s mind, that everything they have could disappear tomorrow.

  “You can’t think that way,” Mike told her when, in a counseling session, she confessed the persistent shred of misgiving.

  “I can’t help it. People come and go—sometimes by choice, and sometimes not.” She was remembering how close they had come to losing Tess. “You can’t guarantee that you’ll be here forever, Mike.”

  “If it’s up to me, I will be.”

  But it might not always be up to him. Life is precarious; you can’t know what lies in the future—or even right around the corner.

  Ironic for a psychic to have come to that realization.

  So really, all Cam can do when it comes to the people she loves—all anyone can do—is hold on tight, and hope.

  But when it comes to Ava—maybe all she can do is let go.

  Had it been a decent hour when his cell phone rang, Randy might have recognized the Philadelphia area code on Caller ID and had the presence of mind to ignore it.

  Instead, groggy with sleep, he finds himself answering it.

  “Randy. It’s Lucinda.”

  The sound of her voice catches him off guard. Or maybe it’s not her voice as much as his own reaction to it. Even after all these years.

  Years? It’s been mere months since he last spoke to her. He called just before Thanksgiving, ostensibly to see whether she’d had any news on the Ava Neary case.

  She hadn’t, of course. She’d have let him know if there had been any new developments…wouldn’t she?

  Maybe not.

  Maybe she had concluded—as he initially had—that they were better off keeping a safe distance from each other.

  How many times did they attempt that in the old days before falling into each other’s arms again?

  It was Neal who pointed out the obvious back then. Neal, who had pretended to look the other way for so long; Neal, who rarely said much of anything that wasn’t directly related to their police work.

  Long-married, fiercely devoted family man Neal.

  “You have to go,” he
told Randy one day. Man of few words. One minute, they were discussing a case—or rather, Neal was talking, and Randy was pretending to listen while watching Lucinda through the glass window of Neal’s office.

  “Go where?” Randy figured he’d missed something, that Neal wanted him to go investigate some detail of the crime.

  “Away. For good.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You have to go. Because of her.” Neal, back to the window, jerked his thumb in Lucinda’s direction.

  Neal was right. If Randy couldn’t have her, he couldn’t be near her. He had to move on.

  And he had tried. For years.

  When he called Lucinda that cold November day, he’d been planning to feel her out, maybe to suggest that they see each other so that she could fill him in on the case and he could fill her in on his own life.

  But she rushed him off the phone, saying she was on her way to see Cam and Mike’s new baby.

  Ever since, amid all that’s been going on, he’s been waiting for the right time to reconnect.

  He never expected Lucinda to beat him to it.

  “Hey, what’s up? How are you?” he asks, trying to sound casual.

  There’s a pause on the other end of the line.

  “I just…Is Carla there with you?”

  She knows, he realizes. That’s why she’s calling.

  Or does she?

  How would she?

  His heart pounds. “No.”

  “Are you at home?”

  He hesitates.

  “No,” he says again. “She is, though. I’m in Tahoe. Skiing. I came out for the long weekend with a couple of buddies.”

  Silence on the other end of the line. “When was the last time you talked to her?”

  Oh, hell. He doesn’t really want to do this right now. Not from here. Not like this.

  “Last night,” he lies. “Why?”

  She ignores the question, asking another of her own. “When are you going back home?”

  Never.

  “In a couple of days.”

  “Randy…”

  She knows he’s lying.

  She knows the truth.

  Why else would she be asking these pointed questions?

  “Yeah?” He holds his breath, waiting.

  But the confrontation doesn’t come. She says only, “I’ll let you get back to your…skiing.”

  “Lucinda, it’s five in the morning here. I’m not skiing.”

  “Oh! Right. I’ll let you get back to sleep then. I never would have called if I had known you were in a different time zone. Sorry, Randy.”

  “No worries.”

  No worries?

  Where did that come from? He’s never used that phrase in his life.

  He’s noticed Californians say it all the time, though.

  And you are in California, he reminds himself.

  Never mind that no worries hardly describes his current frame of mind. Let Lucinda think he’s having a good old time in his rented Tahoe chalet and hanging out on the slopes.

  For now, anyway.

  Sooner or later, she’ll learn the truth.

  Restless, Cam moves around the kitchen, making coffee after all.

  Her gaze falls on a stack of mail on the counter, unopened for at least a couple of days—probably since Mike left on Friday.

  She had forgotten, in fifteen years, how chaotic it can be to have a newborn in the house. How the most mundane things—opening mail, unloading the dishwasher, returning phone calls—can be neglected for days on end.

  After pouring water into the coffeemaker and pressing start, she sits at the table, determined to at least sort the pile so that she can weed the junk—credit card offers, catalogues—from the “real” mail, which in this age of electronic correspondence will all be bills, of course.

  Bill, bill, bill…

  Ah, something that’s neither a bill nor, as far as she can tell, junk.

  The envelope is postmarked in New York City and affixed with a typed white address label that, oddly, bears her name. Her whole name—Camden Neary Hastings.

  That’s the odd part—the Neary.

  Most people in her life these days don’t know her maiden name. Those who were in her life back in the old days when she used it, have long since drifted away.

  Frowning, she turns the envelope over, looking for a return address.

  There isn’t one.

  When she opens it, she finds out why.

  Lucinda had been so sure she’d find Randy at home with Carla; that her vision had been a terrible mistake.

  Or had she?

  Come on, Lucinda. There’s a ring in your coffee pot, for God’s sake!

  A ring in her coffee pot and a corpse in her mind, as vivid as if she’d stumbled across it in person.

  Never in her life has her sixth sense shown her a dead person who wasn’t already dead…or soon to be.

  Why would you think that might have changed now?

  She knows the answer to her own question.

  When she’d first seen Ava Neary being pushed from that rooftop in a vision, she had mistaken her for Cam’s daughter, Tess.

  Then Tess went missing, and Lucinda knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that there would be no happy ending.

  But there was.

  Maybe there will be again.

  But what are the odds that Carla Karnecki Barakat has a lookalike who happens to have been murdered on a bathroom floor somewhere?

  Her head spinning, Lucinda looks at the signet ring.

  Where did it come from?

  And what is that brown stuff on it?

  Could it possibly be…blood?

  But it can’t be Carla’s ring, can it?

  Not with the initial Z on it.

  Neal—I have to call Neal.

  He’s still got the grandkids today, and that long round-trip drive to Scranton, and it’s still so early.

  Bradley. He’ll be up. He’ll know what to do.

  She quickly speed dials his cell phone from her BlackBerry, noticing, as she does, that her battery is down to one bar. She forgot to charge it last night.

  The phone rings a few times, then goes into voice mail. “You’ve reached Bradley Carmichael. Please leave a message, and I’ll call you back.”

  Dammit. He’s probably on a treadmill or something.

  “Bradley. It’s Lucinda. Call me.”

  She knows he checks his voice mail religiously. An aging musical theater actor, he’s been out of work since before the holidays, other than a department store Santa gig.

  For years, he performed on Broadway. He loves to share anecdotes about the hit musicals he’s been in: My Fair Lady, Guys and Dolls, Mame. Now his audition prospects are growing fewer and farther between, and he needs every job he can get.

  Lucinda turns off her BlackBerry to conserve the battery and starts opening drawers, looking for the charger.

  She plugs in the phone, then paces some more.

  She could call Neal…but after last night, she’d feel terrible if she disturbed him without a good reason.

  A ring in your coffee pot is a damned good reason!

  Yet maybe her vision of Carla means nothing.

  Maybe it wasn’t a true vision at all.

  There’s only one way to find out, Lucinda realizes, and heads for the bedroom to get dressed.

  Still in his robe and slippers, carrying a cup of coffee, Vic makes his way to the den, bypassing the television set and his recliner, where he spent all those idle months last year before Kitty came up with her brilliant idea.

  “Why don’t you do that?” she asked one night over dinner, as he told her about the investigative journalist he’d seen interviewed on the news program that morning.

  “Why don’t I do what? Solve the Amelia Earhart disappearance?”

  “No,” Kitty said patiently. “Why don’t you write a book about one of the unsolved cases you worked on?”

  “I can’t do that.”


  “Why not?”

  “Because I’m not a writer.”

  Kitty just looked at him.

  He rubbed his unshaven jaw, looking back at her.

  The next morning, he sat down in front of the computer instead of the television.

  And so it began.

  “Even if I never get this thing published,” he told Kitty, a couple hundred pages in, “at least I feel productive again.”

  “You’ll get it published.”

  Over Thanksgiving, they visited their daughter Melody in Manhattan. One of her friends happens to be a literary agent. At Melody’s urging, and with reluctance, Vic suspects, she agreed to take a look at his work in progress.

  He sent it to her a week later and promptly found himself negotiating with a major publisher by Christmas. Press releases went out after New Year’s, announcing the upcoming publication of his book, On the Night Watch, chronicling his career obsession with a notorious serial killer.

  The book isn’t slated for release until next year, and his official deadline is still months away. But he’s almost finished with it. Before it goes to his editor, it has to be submitted to FBI headquarters for a review, to make sure he isn’t venturing into classified territory.

  Vic only wishes he could write a different ending—one that doesn’t involve the Night Watchman fading into the shadows, eluding capture.

  “Mom? What are you doing?”

  Hearing Tess behind her, Cam gasps.

  Her coffee—her third cup—sloshes all over her robe and the slate floor of the sunken sunroom off the kitchen, where she’s been patiently waiting for a decent hour to call Lucinda Sloan—or Mike, in the mountain time zone.

  Actually, she tried Mike’s cell earlier, heedless of the hour, but he must have been sleeping too soundly to hear it. She couldn’t bring herself to call the main line of the condo he’s sharing with his family. Waking everyone before dawn would require some kind of emergency, and that’s not what this is.

  “Geez, Mom, sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you to death.”

  Tess is wearing sweats and sneakers. Her hair is pulled back in a somewhat stubby pony tail, with loose strands escaping to frame her hazel eyes. For months now, she’s been growing out the layers of her thick, light brown hair, but it’s a slow process. Cam suspects that her boyfriend is the motive for Tess’s trading her longtime sporty style for something a little more feminine.