In Self Defense Susan Sloan (summer reads .txt) 📖

Gus retired, having anointed Richard as the new CEO of Nicolaidis Industries, the Durants packed up and moved to Laurelhurst.  Richard found the place in one day, and didn’t even try to negotiate the multimillion-dollar price tag.

“If you have to quibble about price at that level,” he told Clare proudly, “you can’t afford to buy it.”

Clare loved the little gingerbread house, but she was never quite as comfortable in the Laurelhurst home, feeling far more like a visitor than a resident, even after ten years.  Richard, on the other hand, gloried in all five thousand square feet and two-plus acres of it.

“I never realized,” he would say, breathing deeply, “how much I hate small spaces.”

For twenty years, her life had been wrapped up in the man, his dreams, his drive, his direction.  They were supposed to have lived happily ever after.  And now it had all come to this -- a blood-soaked carpet in a mauve and gray bedroom suite that was larger than the entire trailer Richard had grown up in.

The man who hated small spaces was about to spend the rest of eternity in a box barely bigger than he was.

***

              Erin sat at her desk, ignoring the cup of coffee growing cold in front of her, as she tried to figure out how everything could have gone so wrong.  It was eight o’clock on Friday morning, and she had not yet been home or tried to sleep.

She was the last to leave the Durant home, just after five, and she could still see Clare backed into that corner, could still hear her pathetic whimper.  The detective dropped her head into her hands.  Nothing had gone according to plan.  The stalker had played them for fools.  They had tied up sixteen additional officers for three days and had come away with nothing but egg all over their faces.  Worst of all, Richard Durant was dead.

She wondered if anything would have been different had she and Dusty known about the Beretta, but of course she was only grasping at straws.  Clare had every right in the world to protect herself, and if the police didn’t know about the gun, it was only because it never occurred to them to ask.

There would be an investigation, of course, she knew.  Internal Affairs would crawl all over this, and she and Dusty would take some heavy heat.  Richard Durant’s death was a tragic accident, and would likely be ruled as such, but where did that leave them?  The stalker was still out there, and there was no reason to believe that he wasn’t still after Clare.

And with Richard now permanently out of the picture, that could happen at any time.

“Why do I have this strange feeling?” she wondered aloud.

“What strange feeling?” Dusty inquired.

“That he planned all this,” she said, “right from the start.”

“Who?”

“The stalker, of course.”

“Why?”

“To get rid of her husband.  To make her more vulnerable, more accessible.”

Dusty considered the idea for a moment.  “But how could he have known that Durant was going to come home a day early?” he asked finally.  “Nobody knew that.”

“I don’t know,” she conceded.  “It’s just that the guy knows things.  He’s always known things.  And he’s been playing us like violins from the start.  And there’s something, I can’t quite put my finger on it, that doesn’t feel right.”

“Look,” her partner said, “I’m every bit as bummed about this whole thing as you are.  But the truth is, we blew it, and you’re looking for excuses.”

Erin sighed.  She knew Dusty was right.  And she knew something else, too.  She knew that Clare was still at great risk.  Because, whatever the stalker knew or didn’t know, or had or hadn’t done, the chances of the captain allowing sixteen extra officers to remain on stakeout indefinitely were zero.

***

James Lilly rang the Durants’ doorbell at just past eight o’clock.  Nina let him in.

“Is she all right?” he whispered, although there was no reason to be cautious.

“She’s catatonic, if you call that all right,” Nina replied.  Word of Richard’s death hadn’t yet hit the newspapers or the television stations, but she had taken it upon herself to call James at six-thirty, leaving a message on his answering machine when he didn’t pick up.

“What can I do?” he asked.

“If you could help me get her up off the floor, I’d appreciate it.  I can’t lift her by myself.”

“Off the floor?” James repeated.

“Yes,” Nina declared.  “She’s been there . . . all night.”

James followed Nina up the stairs and into the master bedroom to find Clare still wedged in the corner with her arms still holding herself together, still staring at the same red spot on the carpet.

“This just won’t do,” he murmured, shaking his head.  He crossed the room quickly, bent down, and plucked Clare up off the floor as though she were a child.  “Where do you want her?” he asked.

“Out of here,” Nina said firmly, and led the way to a guestroom just down the hall, right next to the one where she had intended to spend the night but, as it turned out, had instead ended up spending little more than an hour.

James deposited Clare on the bed.  In the process, the robe that Nina managed to put around her slips off, and the flimsy nightgown she was still wearing hid very little.

Nina hastily pulled the covers up over her friend and then ushered James out of the room.  “Thank you,” she said.  “I didn’t want to have to bother you so early, but I didn’t know what else to do.”

“Not a problem,” James assured her.

All Nina had said in her message was that he should come as quickly as he could because something terrible had happened.

“Can you tell me what this is all about?” he asked now, and Nina explained as best she could.  By the time she finished, his face was white and his pale eyes were bulging behind his glasses.

“Someone is stalking her?” he managed to say, his Texas twang accentuated.  “She thought she