Third Grave Dead Ahead

“Alone?”

“I can dial a phone all by myself, Taft.”

“No, are you going over alone? Maybe you should just call your dad and have him check it out.”

I glanced toward the girl at my side. “I won’t be alone. Not exactly. There’s a tiny dead girl with a knife following me at the moment.”

“TMI.”

“And the bar’s open. I doubt an intruder would go there with a dozen off-duty cops right below him.”

“Okay. Can I call your uncle to let him know?”

“No, he already knows it’s a cop hangout. And he’s probably already snoring like a buzz saw. I’ll call him tomorrow.”

Avoiding another lecture from Dad, I trudged over to the office and took the outside stairs to the front entrance instead of cutting through the bar. After a quick scan of the area to make sure Big Fat Liar was nowhere about, I unlocked the door and peeked inside. Everything looked fine and dandy. Which meant I had nothing left to do but clean my apartment. The only thing I hated worse than cleaning my apartment was torture, though the two were a hairsbreadth away from neck-and-neck.

I walked along the sidewalk back to the Causeway, regret eating at me at not having bought the golf cart, when I realized I had company. I could feel someone to my left in the shadows, but before I could get a good look, a car slowed in the street behind me. It kept pace without passing. I slowed my stride as the car followed. Garrett’s guy was parked across the street, but I couldn’t tell if he was awake or not. Awake would have been nice. As I rounded the building and cut across the parking lot, the car eased to a stop next to me.

The streetlight cast a soft reflection on the tinted glass as I took in the blue Nissan hatchback. The window slid down, so I figured I’d give the driver a moment of my time. It was probably too much to hope he just wanted directions.

“Charley?” a woman said from the inside. “Charley Davidson?” A head with curly brown hair leaned into the light, a supermodel smile on her face.

“Yolanda?” I asked. I hadn’t seen her since high school, and we’d never really been friends. I took a microstep closer as she nodded. She hadn’t changed a bit. In high school, she was more the cheerleader type, hung out with my sister’s crowd. I was more the annoying type that made fun of my sister’s crowd from a safe distance and hung out with losers, being a loser myself. Proud to say.

“I got the message your assistant left and tried your office, but you were already gone. And then I saw you walk up the stairs and figured I’d just catch you here.”

Two things struck me instantly: First, it was late to be visiting my office. Or any office, for that matter. Second, why not just call? Why drive all the way over at this hour? Her smile faltered for the barest instant, and a nuance of concern filtered its way toward me.

I plastered a smile on my face. “Thank you for coming. How have you been?” When her arms reached out the window toward me, I leaned in for a hug, awkward considering the limited space we had. “I’d invite you up to my place, but it’s kind of a mess right now.” I gestured over my shoulder with a nod.

“No problem. And I’ve been great. Three kids, two dogs, and one husband.” She laughed and I joined her. She seemed happy enough.

“Sounds busy. I just wanted to ask you some questions about a case I’m working on.”

“Your assistant told me.” The concern spiked again as her gaze did a quick perimeter check. “Do you want to just hop in? We can talk in the car.”

“Absolutely.” I cast a quick glance over my shoulder. Whoever was in the shadows looked on with interest. I could feel it. Maybe it was Garrett’s man. No one seemed to be in the car parked across the way. I headed around Yolanda’s Nissan as she unlocked the doors and raised her window. After I let myself in, I asked, “So everything’s been okay?”

“Wonderful,” she said, lowering the radio. She had yet to turn off the car. The heater was nice. “You’re working on a case that involves Nathan Yost?”

Right to the point. I liked that in an old acquaintance. “Yes. His wife is missing. You may have seen it on the news.”

“Along with other things.” She smiled sadly, and I realized she’d seen the report of the carjacking. “Are you okay?”

“Oh, that?” I waved a dismissive hand. “That was nothing. I’ve known the guy for ages. He was a perfect gentleman the whole time he held me at knife point.”

Suddenly her eyes sparkled with curiosity. “Will you tell me every single thing that happened? Were you scared? Did he threaten you?”

After a soft chuckle, I asked, “Watch a lot of crime shows?”

She nodded guiltily. “Sorry. I don’t get out much.”

“Not at all. Can you tell me what happened with Dr. Yost in college?”

Taking a deep breath, she said, “We dated for about a year. We were young and it all got serious pretty fast, but my parents refused to let us get married until after I’d graduated. It infuriated Nathan.” She shook her head, remembering back. “I mean infuriated him that they butted in to what he saw as none of their business. His reaction was so bizarre that it knocked me out of my trance. I started to open my eyes to what was really going on. In the year that we’d been dating, I’d lost almost all my friends, hardly ever saw my family, and rarely went anywhere without him. What I saw as charming at first became—” She struggled for the right word. “—well, suffocating.”

“I hate to say this, but you aren’t the first person to tell me that about him. Why did you press charges against him?”

“He used to tease me about what would happen to me if I ever left him. He would make it into a joke, and I would laugh.”

“Can you give me an example?” I had a hard time seeing a threat like that as something either of them would find comical.

“Well, once he said something like, ‘You know if you ever leave me, they’ll find your lifeless body at the bottom of Otero Canyon.’”

I offered her my best horrified smile, trying really hard to see the humorous side of that statement.

“I know,” she said, nodding in agreement, “I know it sounds horrible, but the way he’d say it, it was just funny. Then after my parents refused to let us get married, everything changed. He started pressuring me to elope, asked me over and over how I could let them interfere. And then the jokes became outright threats. He became unstable, and it dawned on me that he’d always been unstable, I’d just learned what to say and what not to say around him.”

“Did he hurt you?”

“Me?” she asked, surprised. “No. Not me. That’s not how he does things.”

My brows knitted in question.

“It took a lot of counseling for me to be able to say this, to come to this conclusion, but he was controlling me by controlling my environment. Who I hung out with. When I hung out with them. What I could talk about and what I couldn’t. He even monitored my phone calls.”

Classic domination.

“He never hurt me directly. He controlled me by hurting those around me.”

I had to wonder how he did it all. How he could be so controlling with a career like his, with the hours he must have kept. “But he did eventually threaten you?”

The sad smile she gave me made me realize I was wrong about that, too. She bowed her head and continued her story. “After my parents had put their foot down on the wedding plans, his animosity seemed to grow daily. And when I wouldn’t give in to his requests, he grew more and more furious until one day he just snapped out of it. Like a light switch had been turned off. He just, I don’t know, got happy again.”

“Sounds suspicious. Or drug induced.”

“It struck me that way as well, but I was just so relieved, that when he invited my parents to have dinner with us one evening, it never occurred to me that he could be up to something.”

“Let me guess. He made the dinner.”

“Yes. And it was wonderful until about halfway through, when my mother became violently ill. So much so,