She listened as the woman continued to rant into the phone until the built-in timer stopped Mary midvent.
The phone rang again. Determined to put Mary in her place, she started to pick it up, but the machine came on immediately. “I’m going to tear your hair out and cut your uppity rich little heart into pieces. You’re always flirting with him, now that you know who your mommy is. Well, you’re still just a bastard. A bastard she threw away at birth. And you should die. You deserve to die. And you know what? I’m coming to get you. I am!”
She walked over to the phone to pick it up to tell Mary what she should do with herself, but the phone clicked off.
A minute later it rang again. She picked up the receiver. “Look, Mary—”
“Um, it’s not Mary,” a shy, tentative voice interrupted her. “It’s Barbara. Barbara Hirshorn,” she said, as if afraid Genevieve might not remember her.
“Oh, Barbara. Sorry,” Genevieve said quickly.
“Lou and I are going to meet your mother at O’Malley’s. We were thinking you might want to join us.”
“I talked to my mother a little while ago and told her I thought I’d just stay home, but thanks for asking,” Genevieve said.
“Are you sure? We could swing by for you.”
Gen hesitated. She might as well go. Her mother wanted to see her, she wanted to see her mother, and she had no idea whether Joe would be coming by or not.
“You know, I think I will come. But you don’t need to pick me up. I’ll take my own car. I’ll see you all there in a little while.”
As soon as Barbara hung up, Gen dialed Joe’s cell. She didn’t expect to get him, and she didn’t, so she left a message. “Hey, Joe. It’s Gen. I’m going to be at O’Malley’s with my mother. Meet us there when you can. If you want to, I mean.”
That done, she brushed her hair, put on some lipstick and headed out. She took the elevator down to the garage, but she hadn’t taken two steps before she got the strange feeling that she was being followed. A ghost again? The ghost of Lori Star trying to reach her?
She felt the strongest temptation to run back to her apartment. All of a sudden she wanted to be anywhere but in the garage.
She heard a shuffling sound, followed by a breeze, like a whisper.
“Hey, Tim!” she called loudly. Surely he was here somewhere.
“Tim?”
There was no answer, and she could still feel the softness of the breeze against her face, warm and….
Urgent.
Almost imperceptibly at first, the air began to take shape, forming into something both there and not there. She could have sworn she was seeing Leslie MacIntyre, and she was speaking, desperately and in a whispered rush.
Go back, Genevieve. Go back to your apartment. Lock the door and call the police. Now! Quickly!
Without questioning why, Gen raced for the door, her key card out and ready.
And then she heard footsteps behind her. Real footsteps. Panicked, she turned…
And saw Edgar Allan Poe coming for her.
“Stop right there,” she snapped, at a loss for any other option.
And for a moment, it worked. The would-be Poe seemed to trip, even though there was nothing in his path.
Genevieve thought she heard Leslie’s voice again. Hurry!
She dropped her purse as she fumbled with the door. The damned thing wouldn’t open. She realized too late that it had been jammed somehow. She hurriedly reached down for her purse, groping for the canister of Mace she always carried. She found it and turned, but she didn’t get a chance to use it, because something hit her in the head so hard that she saw stars.
“Bitch!” she vaguely heard someone say.
She couldn’t pass out, she told herself. If she did, she would be lost.
Who the hell was it? Mary Vincenzo? Had she come to make good on her threats?
She realized the canister was still in her hand, and she managed to aim it in the direction of her attacker and hit the spray button. She was rewarded with a howl of pain, but it was too late. Something came down on her head again, and she crashed to the garage floor.
CHAPTER 19
Jared groaned when he saw Joe enter the private visitors’ room.
“Oh, great. The brilliant P. I. Okay, you got me. I didn’t pay my parking tickets.”
“But you did kill your father.”
Jared stared at him angrily. “Don’t be ridiculous. Of course I didn’t kill my father.”
“You killed your father, you killed William Morton and at the very least you contributed to the death of Bradley Hicks. You also murdered Lori Star and attempted to murder Sam Latham.”
“No!” Jared cried.
His horror and his fierce frown of denial certainly seemed real, Joe thought.
“Jared, I just came from Virginia, where you rented a Poe costume.”
“What?” Jared asked, sounding truly confused.
“Look,” Joe told him. “I can get the cops in here now, and they’ll take your confession and help you work out a deal with the D.A. to avoid the death penalty.”