TICK TOCK RUN (Romantic Mystery Suspense) (38 page)

I angled my head and returned the scowl. 

Mark went silent, and then something flashed in his eyes.  “Laura worked out who the roses were from, didn’t she?”  A disbelieving, yet smug smile curved Mark’s lips, and then he sighed.  “Okay.  You got me.  I admit I have a big crush.  But, I’m not a fool.  Laura’s marrying my best mate.  Game over.” 

I prodded his chest, and whispered, “You’ve slipped some of those photos into your DVD for your wedding speech.  It’s obvious.”

A door creaked and someone tapped my shoulder.  I flinched, twisted around and stood on a foot. 

“Ouch!  Careful, Chelsea.  What DVD?”  Paul dragged his stricken foot from under my red pumps.  “Has anyone seen Laura?”

“No.  I just… er…” I rushed into the downstairs toilet to avoid explaining myself.  Having bolted the door, I stood motionless, gripped the sink and faced the mirror above it.  Breathing heavily, I replayed Mark’s responses in my head. 
Not a fool?  Game over? 
Had we had two conversations wrapped inside one or was it purely about his crush on Laura?  I felt none the wiser.

Nevertheless, venting had its plus points.  I felt a little less in need of punching something, or someone. 

I stared at my glum reflection in the mirror.  Shadows tired my once pretty eyes.  Make-up didn’t exist in my vocabulary any more, and a furrow between my eyebrows had deepened.  I let out a long exasperated breath, then pressed my ear to the door.

No longer hearing the sound of movement, I stepped back into the hall.  I glanced at the wall clock, wondering how many hours we had left to solve this mess.  Troubled and uneasy, I stared up at the static hands, moved closer, and noticed the absence of a ticking sound. 

Commonsense argued that this was nothing.  The batteries could have drained.  I rapped my knuckles on the glass face.  Nothing.  Not a single tick.

I wouldn’t have given it another thought on any other day.  However, all three clock hands had stopped, indicating one o’clock.  Not a second or minute before or after.  One o’clock precisely: the time of tomorrow’s wedding ceremony
and
Laura’s deadline. 

With a sharp intake of breath, I pivoted on the balls of my feet and pressed my back against the wall.  Happy chatter and music poured into the hallway from rooms downstairs.  In this house, where only innocent friends ought to be, did Laura’s blackmailer really linger among us?  But then, despite the subtle method, why would he, or she, want to announce their own presence, by stopping the clock? 

Everything still pointed to Mark.  I felt sure of it.

I wanted to wipe the smug look off his face by calling the police, watch them manhandle him into the back of a van.  However, Laura’s depressed state from when her parents died sprang into my mind, like an irritating website pop-up box.  The image pushed every rational thought out, each time. 
Paul cannot be allowed to find out.
  I didn’t relish watching Laura slide down the stairway to depression again.  Was I protecting myself?  Or protecting Laura?

I moved into the loud and lively kitchen.  In my absence the rest of our friends had arrived.  All the girls from Saturday’s hen evening.  Emma, Claire, Jayne, Megan and Jess were sniggering when I greeted them.  They cleared up glass shards and a Champagne cork from the worktop.  They’d bust a ceiling light bulb and no doubt wondered why I didn’t bother to comment.

I slinked out of the kitchen into the hall in search of Laura.  I missed my best friend so much I could almost cry.  She’d been acting like a different person lately.  Snappy, selfish, argumentative...  “Hold on, what’s going on up there?”  While I strolled along the hall, fragments of an argument drifting from upstairs yanked me from my thoughts.  

Hovering at the foot of the staircase, I covered my right ear to blot out the laughter from the kitchen.  A door slammed above, cutting off the argument altogether.  A moment later, Paul stomped down the stairs with a hard grimace.  I experienced a déjà vu moment of dread.  I sidestepped, pretending to be queuing for the toilet, and twirled a lock of hair while humming as though minding my own business.  The lounge door opened and closed.  I hurried upstairs to locate Laura.

After flinging open her bedroom door, I looked into the room.  Laura, sitting on the bed, turned to face me.  Her poker-straight hair swung to the side, revealing glossy red eyes and a strained expression of sadness.  She flinched away from my gaze and covered her face with her hands, looking totally absorbed in a web of upset.

I sat beside her for the next instalment.  “Hit me with it.  What’s happened this time?”

“Paul received another text message.”  She continued sobbing, sniffed and trembled.  “A much worse one.”

“What?”  I held my breath.  “What did the message say?”  When Mark said ‘game over’ to me earlier, he hadn’t meant it.

Her bloodshot gaze rolled up to me.  “I know a secret about your fiancée.  Ask her.” 

“You’re not wrong there.”  Concern turned to shock, which, for a second, rendered me speechless. 
Had I caused this by confronting Mark? 
“This message is
much
worse.  Any photos attached?”

She shook her head.  Her face had drained to an ungodly pale shade, bordering on white.  “I told Paul it was a joke.  That the same person would probably spray shaving foam in our bed on our wedding night.”

Under different circumstances this would have made me laugh.  But not now. 

I passed Laura a box of tissues from the nightstand.  She blew her nose and screwed the tissue in her fist.  I rubbed her back during a brief maddening silence, while discreetly scanning the room for the white handbag of cash.  I couldn’t spot it. 
Where’s the cash?
  I spoke in my softest voice.  “You didn’t hand over the money while I was gone, did you?”

She shook her head. 

“Then we’ve still got a bargaining chip,” I said, brightly.

My natural impulse was to cuddle her, but my brain began drowning through overload.  I couldn’t be a comforter, a problem-solver and a detective all at once. 

I stared at her, regretting all the times in my life I’d moaned about the little things; slow drivers who hog the fast lane, irritating music when your phone call is put on hold, stepping in dog poop...  These trivialities, that are so enraging at the time, pale when faced with a genuine problem.  Right now, I’d have given anything to be stuck behind a lane hogger with squidgy dog poop on my shoe.

Laura blew her nose again. 

I withdrew my hand from her back.  “Laura, this has worked in our favour.”

She rubbed her eyes and stared at me.  “Did you bang your head on the way up?”

“How many people know you, Daryl, our email addresses
and
Paul’s private mobile number?”  I pointed my finger at the door.  “I hate to say it, but the more I learn, the more I’m convinced that it is one of the people downstairs.”

“But they’re our closest friends.  Why would any of them put us through this?”

I pointed at the carpet.  “Mark’s still downstairs, you know?”

“I know.”

“Between one of the girls and Mark, who would you accuse?”

She bit her lip.  “Mark.”

“I need to show you something.”  I pulled my mobile from my pocket and thrust the photo of Mark hugging the sex doll towards her.

Laura’s eyes, then mouth, sprung open, and then she froze.  She looked like she’d swallowed electricity.

“I think it’s time we showed him this,” I said, and grinned.

Laura must have been too anaesthetized to speak. 

“Let’s turn this on its head, Laura, and see how
he
likes having a deadline of his own.”

Laura’s eyebrows lifted and quivered.  “What?  Where did you—?” 

“But this is it, Laura.  I know you’ve had a tough year, and I’m partly to blame for that.  I’ll make one last attempt to help and then I’m out.  I want
normal
problems again.”

“I’m sorry, Chelsea.  I never wanted you to get dragged into this.” 

“So anyway, what time are Paul and Mark leaving for the hotel?”

“In an hour.”

“Okay.  This is my idea.”  I leaned closer.  “Tell Mark you want thirty-five grand back and the photos to keep quiet.  Say he’s got one hour to reply or you’ll confess to Paul, shop Mark to the police and float the photos of him groping his plastic girlfriend over the internet, and paste them up on every street corner.”

Laura blinked fast.  “You must have banged your head.  Are you crazy?”

“I’m heading that way,” I muttered.  “We’ll work out the Daryl thing later.  For now, convince Mark that you no longer care about the truth coming out.  You’ve had enough.  He’s counting on your fear factor here.  He knows you’ll do anything to hide the affair from Paul.”  I rubbed my palms together.  “Let’s see how he likes a taste of his own poison.”

A crease formed between her eyebrows while, I assumed, she processed my words.  Mark was blackmailing Laura, and now we were about to blackmail him in return.  No wonder I had to shake a response from her.  “Laura?”

“B, but…” she stuttered, shrugging off my grip.  “What if your plan goes horribly wrong, and Mark tells Paul about the affair early because we made him angry?”

“Then he’ll ruin his chances of getting more money from you, and lose all his friends.  Which, I’m sure, he doesn’t want to do.” 

In a weak voice, Laura said, “But what if we’ve got it all wrong and it’s not Mark, not someone in the house?”

“Unless it was you, someone stopped the clock in the hall at the exact time of your wedding ceremony tomorrow.  That can’t be a coincidence, not after everything that’s happened.” 

Laura nodded, a hairline movement.  “Really?”

“He’s toying with us.  And those red roses, well, Mark admitted to sending them.”

“Hardly original, but sweet, I guess.”

Bewildered, I said, “Sweet?”

“Let the flowers do the talking when he daren’t step up and...”  She paused and shook herself.  “What the hell am I saying?  That is, if he wasn’t stealing my inheritance and going all out to kibosh my wedding.” 

“So, you mean sickly sweet?”

Laura looked ready to cry again.  “I know I deserve to, but I can’t lose Paul, Chelsea.”

“Lee’s viewing surveillance discs as we speak, trying to spot who took that photo.”

“He is?  Well, I won’t hold my breath.”

“Exactly.  So we need to do this.”

Laura pulled the mobile from her pocket, but hesitated.  “I’m just not sure.”

I snatched it from her hand.  “Give it here.  I’ll do it.  Time’s in short supply.”

In a hurry, I typed:
‘I want money and those photos within one hour or I’ll shop you to the police, stick this pic of you and your plastic girlfriend on Facebook.  One hour, Mark.  Chelsea.’

I sent the message and photo to both Mark’s personal mobile and the anonymous number Laura received the demands from, edging my bets in the hope that Mark would have at least one mobile switched on. 

I handed the phone back to Laura and gripped her shoulders.  “It’s done.  Now, listen.”  My voice fell low and serious.  “I want you to promise me something.”

She wiped her eyes and looked at me.

“You’re not paying any more money.”

She shook her head.  “I can’t promise that.”

“If it is Mark, we’ve reached checkmate.  He’ll not want this photo plastered around town.  Either agree not to pay, or I’ll tell Paul what you did, myself.”