Shadow of Suspicion (Haunted by the Past) (23 page)

Callie stared in shock. Her brain
refused to accept what her eyes were seeing. The lovely kind woman she’d come
to know stared back at her with cold, deadly eyes. No wonder she’d known Callie
would be at Lucinda’s funeral. It made complete sense now. Callie had talked it
over with Trish just the other day. Hurt lanced through her heart at the
betrayal. She’d thought Trish was her friend.

“All this time you pretended to be my
friend, encouraged me to be a part of the family……..why?” Callie had to know.
How could she have been fooled so badly? “Did you ever actually care or was it
all an act?”

Trish shimmied out of her dress and
unzipped her fat suit, all the while keeping her gun in one hand. “I’m an
accomplished actress, dear. I can cry at the drop of a hat. It was one of the
things they loved about me in the theatre. I think I could have made it in
films or TV if I hadn’t met Max.”

She paused, her face slightly dreamy
for a moment. Her eyes snapped back to Callie. “As to why, I had to keep you
onside. I knew you’d never suspect me if I was your friend. I wanted you to
stay in town. It makes it easier to dispatch you and blame it on someone else.”

Callie recalled every kind word,
every caring glance, or tear filled expression on Trish’s face. All a lie! She
glared at the woman before her, the betrayal hard to process. Trish stepped out
of the fat suit and dropped it to the ground. She stood before Callie dressed
in a simple t-shirt and leggings, her thin frame restored.

Trish held her arms wide. “Amazing,
huh.” She smiled, but it was a hard, thin slash across her face. She slipped
her arms into her coat, the garment now swamping her. “Believe me, I’ve needed
every one of my skills to keep Max from guessing that I’d found out his little
secret.”

The implications of Trish’s words
made her feel ill. How in the world could the woman believe her own husband,
Sandra’s brother no less, was Callie’s father? It was sick, twisted, and
completely wrong. Max was her uncle. Trish had to have some kind of mental
problem. How she’d dreamed up such a terrible scenario was beyond Callie. Then
again, the woman had created a whole other person. Nothing else should surprise
Callie, considering.

She swallowed hard. She had to penetrate
Trish’s delusion somehow. Callie prayed Trish wasn’t too far into her insanity
to listen to reason.

“Trish, this is crazy.” Callie kept
her voice as calm and steady as she could. “Your husband can’t possibly be my
father. Think about it! He’s Sandra’s brother.”

Trish’s face twisted into a bitter
mask of hatred. “Don’t you think I’m not painfully aware of that? Do you really
think I would entertain such a notion, if I didn’t know for a fact that it was
true?”

Her shriek echoed through the woods.
“They made a complete and utter fool of me. I was so in love with him, but it
was all a lie! Do you have any idea how I felt when I found out?”

Callie clenched her jaw. Trish was
out of her mind. “You are wrong. Whatever you think you know, you have to be
mistaken. You need help. I think you should see a doctor.”

“You keep telling yourself that,
dear.” Trish choked on a sob. “I know different and so do your grandparents.”

Callie shivered at her words. A
sliver of doubt wedged itself inside her. Rebecca’s visit flowed through her
memory. Her grandmother had been so hostile. She remembered thinking at the
time how strange it was. If Trish told the truth, it would explain Rebecca’s
attitude towards her. Callie clasped a hand to her throat. What was she
thinking? She shook her head in denial. It couldn’t be true. It was too awful
to believe.

Trish paced backwards and forwards,
her voice rising and falling as she spoke. Callie wanted to block out the words
that fell from the woman’s mouth, but she couldn’t. No matter what, she had to
know if Trish was simply deluded or whether what she’d told Callie was actually
true. She owed it to Sophie to learn the truth, if nothing else.

Trish’s voice became hollow. “We’d
only been married a couple of months when I found out their terrible secret. I
was working late and Max went to visit Sandra. I never gave it a second thought.
I was so happy and so blissfully ignorant.” She stopped still and stared into
space. “What a blind, trusting fool.”

Her gaze snapped to Callie. The
torment in Trish’s eyes stabbed through Callie like a knife. “My work
colleagues sweetly let me go home early that day. I went to surprise my Max,
only it was me that was in for the shock of my life.” She leaned towards
Callie, her face wracked with pain. “They didn’t even see me at the window. The
argument was so loud and fierce, it’s a wonder the neighbours didn’t hear
everything.”

“What argument? What happened?” Callie
whispered.

She struggled to keep abreast of
Trish’s wondering thoughts. She desperately hoped that whatever Trish had heard
or seen, there was some other explanation. She refused to accept Max as her
father. It was too awful to believe.

“You still think I’m wrong, don’t
you? I can tell by the expression on your face.” Trish’s lips twisted into an
ugly sneer. “I’m not wrong. I wish I were. Do you want to know what I saw?”

Callie forced herself to nod her
head. She clenched her hands into fists. Her nails dug into her flesh, but she
didn’t care. She bit her lip and braced herself. Her body trembled. She felt as
if she was poised on the edge of a precipice, and the next few moments would
determine whether she flew or dropped to the ground like a stone.

Trish bared her teeth. “I saw my
husband in nothing but his underwear. That bitch Sandra had only a sheet
wrapped around her. I could hear Rebecca screaming at them. She demanded to
know what the hell they were doing.” Trish wiped her streaming nose with the
back of her hand. “Do you know what Max said? He told them he loved Sandra, as
a man loves a woman. She was the only woman he’d ever loved and he wasn’t sorry
for what they’d done. He made it clear it wasn’t their first time.”

Callie held a hand to her mouth. Nausea
worked its way up her throat. This couldn’t be happening. The entire world
seemed to tip on its axis and for a moment Callie thought she might faint.
Trish’s words rang through her head like a death toll.

“My husband stood there and declared
his love for another woman………..his sister no less.” Trish thumped her chest.
“He stabbed me right through the heart with his words. I thought I would die,
the pain was so great. The next thing I knew, Rebecca was demanding to know if
he was Sophie’s father. He was so proud when he told them he was.”

Callie held up a hand. “Stop,
please.”

She retched and the contents of her
stomach emptied out onto a patch of grass beside her. Shock numbed her whole
body. “I can’t believe this. Please tell me this isn’t true!”

“I wish it wasn’t.” Trish stared at
Callie, her expression sorrowful. “You know, I never wanted any of this. I’m
not the sort of person that enjoys hurting another. I’ve been left with no
choice.”

“Please Trish, it’s not my fault who
my parents are. You have to know this horrifies me as much as it has you,”
Callie pleaded. “I would never have come here had I known. Let this end here
and allow me to leave. Hasn’t there been enough pain over this?”

“Come now, dear. I am not a fool. You
would never let Sophie’s death go unpunished, if I let you go. We both know
that.” Trish cocked her head to one side and regarded Callie through hooded
eyes. “Besides, I refuse to share this world with my husband’s unnatural
children. If that idiot Lucinda hadn’t blown herself up instead of you, we
wouldn’t be in this situation. Everything would have been taken care of
already. It would be over.”

Callie gasped. “You mean you really
were friends with Lucinda? You persuaded her to plant that bomb?”

“Yes, I was Lucinda’s friend.” Trish
smirked. “That kind of happened by accident. Sandra had moved away for some
years after Sophie died. I was happy and tried to forget the sordid truth. Out
of sight, out of mind, so they say. My Mitch was born and I truly believed we
could make it as a family.”

Trish began to pace again. “Then a few
of years ago, Sandra moved back here. Max started spending time with her and I
became suspicious. I used my theatrical background to change my appearance and
spy on them.” She laughed. “Lucinda ran into me during one of my surveillances.
Max happened to glance in our direction, so I engaged her in a conversation in
case he recognised me through my make-up.”

She shook her head. “I needn’t have
worried. He didn’t suspect a thing, but I ended up with Lucinda chewing my ear
off and shoving her number at me. She thought we’d hit it off.” She shrugged. “I
decided to encourage the friendship. I could let off steam with her, and she
was useful to have around when I spied on Max. Besides, I always believed that
things happen for a reason. I was right too. I knew it the moment you turned
up. Lucinda was very handy to have around when it came to dealing with you.”

“Was it Lucinda who pushed me down
the stairs?” Callie asked, her voice trembling. She’d never have imagined Trish
was so devious. Lucinda obviously never found out the identity of the woman who
was supposed to be her friend.

“No, that one was me. I simply let
Lucinda think that I’d done it for her.” Trish grinned. “Stupid girl was so
grateful that I cared so much about her, but she told me not to take such risks
again. Of course, when you split her and Jason up, she changed her mind. It was
easy to convince her to run you down. I thought I may have had difficulty in
getting you to the street, but you came so easily. It would have been perfect,
but she stuffed that up as well.”

“And the photograph?” Callie forced
the words out of her tight throat. She could not believe the lengths Trish had
gone to. The knowledge left a hollow ache in her chest.

“That was Lucinda. She liked the idea
of scaring you rigid. I was angry with her over that. It gave you evidence for
the police. Thankfully, they had no way of tracing it.” Trish glanced at her
watch. “I think we’ve covered everything we need to. It’s time to finish this.
I have to be home before Mitch.”

Callie leapt to her feet and held out
her hands. “Trish, please don’t do this. You’ll never get away with it. Think
about Mitch. How would he feel if he learns his mother killed both his
half-sisters?”

“Don’t you speak my Mitch’s name!”
Trish screamed. She waved the gun at Callie’s chest. “He will never, never know
the truth. I won’t have him tarnished by this. There is no reason for him to
ever find out that I was involved in your disappearance. After all, if anyone
remembers anything from this morning, all they would have seen is Sue,
Lucinda’s bereaved friend. They will never suspect me.”

Callie stepped back with a cry.
Terror gripped her in its icy claws. She clamped her hands over her ears,
afraid she would hear the gun explode and end her life. Sobs ripped out of her
and she sank to her knees.

A hand clamped around her wrist.
Trish hauled her to her feet with surprising strength for such a thin woman.
She planted her hand between Callie’s shoulder blades and pushed her forward.

“Move. I want this over with.”

Callie wiped her damp face with the
sleeve of her coat. She couldn’t believe this was happening to her. “Why kill
me and Sophie? Why aren’t you taking this out on Max and Sandra? They are the
ones that betrayed you. I’ve done nothing wrong and neither had Sophie.”

“As much as I hate what he’s done, I
still love Max. I couldn’t hurt him.” Callie could hear the deep pain in the
older woman’s voice. If the situation hadn’t been so deadly, she would have
felt sorry for Trish. “Besides, I’m not really killing you. I’m simply stamping
out something that should never have existed in the first place.”

She shoved Callie forward. “Now quit
stalling and move.”

Callie wracked her brain to think of
some way to stop this madness, but Trish kept pushing her in the back every
time she dragged her heels. She couldn’t think of a single thing that she could
say that would change Trish’s mind. The woman had been pushed beyond reason.  

They hadn’t moved far into the trees
when Callie spied a mound of earth piled up. A shovel poked upward from where
it was buried deep in the soil. She stopped short. A large hole gaped open in
the ground. All the breath left her body. Surely it wasn’t what she thought it
was. The shape and size reminded her of a similar hole in which Lucinda’s
remains had recently been placed.

Trish shoved Callie toward the hole.
All the air left her lungs as she gazed down into the deep, rectangular pit.
She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t even blink. Small spots danced in front of
her eyes as she stared in horror at the wooden box lying at the bottom of the
hole.

“In you get.” Trish gave her another
small shove. Callie dug in her heels. She swung her arms around to keep her
balance.

“Please, no!” She didn’t recognise
her own voice. Was that terrified keening really her? Ice cold terror plunged
through her veins. “Shoot me first! You can’t just bury me. Please, have mercy.”

“I’m sorry, dear. There is no other
way. I’m not a cold blooded murderer, despite what you may think. It was years
before I could stop seeing Sophie’s struggles. I can’t go through that again.”
Trish’s voice hitched as she spoke. “Besides, Sandra told us all that you’d
died at birth. That’s what should have happened. An unnatural creature such as
you should never have been born. I’m simply putting you where you belong.”