Hell Bent

fingered the tazer she kept there.

Annabelle smiled to herself. Like mother, like daughter.

“Speaking of Sam, where is he?” Cassie asked then.

Dylan ran a hand through his curly hair and stifled a yawn. “He took off early this morning. Said he had something to take care of and would be back in a few hours.”

Jack nodded. Annabelle knew what he was thinking. Obviously, Sam had been called away for a job. It was the only thing he would leave this situation for. Assignments tended to take precedence in their line of work.

“There’s a taxi waiting,” Jack told them as he pushed off of the table and made his way to the front door. Annabelle and Dylan followed after him. “Don’t open the door for anyone. If they belong on this side of it, they’ll have a key to get them here. If they don’t have a key, go out the fire escape and take a taxi to Milwaukee and Sherman,” Jack instructed.

Cassie nodded and locked the door behind them.

Jack had the taxi driver drop him off a block away from the book store so that Meredith wouldn’t see him. Annabelle and Dylan continued on to the Lavender Garden, leaving the driver a ten dollar tip.

The two-story brick building had freshly painted wood trim in light purple and white, and below the windows on each side, painted lavender climbed the bricks and bloomed around the window panes. It was a lovely building, welcoming in a Thomas Kinkade kind of way. It was obvious that someone cared a great deal about the store and put in a good amount of time and effort into its appearance.

Annabelle glanced at Dylan, who nodded at her, and then she led him inside.

There was a small sleigh bell on the door that announced their arrival. Annabelle stood on the door step, taking in the surroundings. It looked like a large library, with a spiral staircase at the back and center of the giant room, and a second level that circled all the way around like a balcony.

“Are you Miss Drake?”

Annabelle turned to face the woman who had addressed her. She was a very small woman, several inches shorter than Annabelle, and probably thirty pounds lighter. Her hair was yellow-blonde and cut into a stylish, highlighted bob. She had green-gray eyes and long, long lashes. A tiny diamond nose ring accentuated her waifish, elf-like features.

“Yes. Are you Virginia?”

The petite, pretty woman nodded, smiling warmly. However, she gave a furtive glance in Dylan’s direction.

Annabelle pulled Dylan forward and introduced him. “This is Dylan Anderson – Teresa’s son.”

“Hi,” Dylan said, offering her his hand.

Virginia tilted her head to one side, her expression becoming at once sympathetic. “I’m so, so sorry about your mother, Dylan.”

Dylan’s eyes widened and he blushed a little. And then he remembered. And the color drained from his face. This hadn’t been what he was expecting. The condolence caught him off guard.

Annabelle hurried to come to the rescue.

“Miss Meredith, is there a place we can go to talk?”

“Of course,” she said, gesturing toward the spiral staircase across the vast library-like room. “We can talk upstairs.”

Annabelle followed her through the stacks of books and couldn’t help scanning the titles of them as she went. A lot of them were classics. Homer’s Iliad, To Kill A Mockingbird, Oliver Twist. A few of them were newer classic- type books, like Robert R. McCammon’s “Boy’s Life.” And then there were the books she’d never heard of but with titles interesting enough that she almost desperately wanted to stop and read their back-cover summaries.

When Meredith led them up the staircase and back to an office at the back of the store, it dawned on Annabelle that the small woman worked at the Lavender Garden.

As if she had read Annabelle’s mind, Virginia turned and offered her an explanatory smile. “I own the store,” she said, somewhat shyly. “Well, actually, I will own it. Some day. In, say, sixty years.” She opened the door and led them inside, gesturing to a few chairs that were around a round table at the center of the room. “Right now, Wells Fargo owns it. I pay them to let me work my butt off here.”

Annabelle and Dylan took seats at the small table and took off their jackets.

When Virginia sat down across from them at the round table, Annabelle got right to the point. “Miss Meredith-”

“Please, call me Ginnie. Or Merry. Either one.” She smiled warmly.

Annabelle blinked. “Okay, Ginnie.”

Ginnie nodded.

“Ginnie, the reason we’re here is…” She glanced at Dylan to make sure he was okay with this. He nodded at her, swallowing audibly.

“Dylan’s father, Max, was also killed recently. And we have reason to believe that his death and Teresa’s death are linked… To Craig’s death.”

This time, it was Ginnie’s turn to blink. Her eyes got very wide. She paled. “Oh my.”

“Obviously, you and Craig knew each other quite well,” Annabelle continued, making certain that her tone was gentle, her voice low.

“We were lovers,” she blurted, her color returning to paint her cheeks pink. She fidgeted in her seat, obviously a little stunned that she’d suddenly out-and-out admitted so much. With wide eyes, she went on to explain. “We were lab partners in school and we spent a lot of time together and…” Her voice trailed off, her cheeks reddening further. “Well… Anyway, we were close.” She looked down at the table, lowering her lids. Her countenance drained away, then, from friendly and jovial to poignant.

“I know how you feel,” Annabelle and Dylan both said at the same time.

They looked at each other. Surprised registered on Dylan’s features.

Ginnie looked up, her gaze sliding from one to the other. Then Annabelle looked away from Dylan and stared down at her hands for a moment before going on. “I’m so sorry, Ginnie, about what happened.”

She shook her head, biting her lip. “I don’t care what they tell me, I can’t believe that he would have been so careless as to leave his gas on and blow himself up. I have never believed it. I never will.”

“That’s what they told you happened?” Dylan asked. He was still stealing glances at Annabelle, obviously wondering what had happened to her that she would know how Virginia Meredith felt. But Annabelle knew that he wouldn’t bother her about it now. She and Dylan had been friends for a long time. He was probably not so much surprised as a little hurt that whatever had happened to her, she hadn’t already shared it with him.

“Yes. They said it was a gas explosion. But, the problem is, he didn’t have a gas stove. He had a gas-assisted fire place. Which he never used. Trust me, I know because I often asked him to light a fire so we could…” She trailed off again and then shrugged. “He didn’t like fire. Was afraid of it. He had a huge scar across his fore-arm from where a Bunsen burner had seared off all of his hair when he was in high school. He didn’t smoke, he never lit candles. Nothing.”

Annabelle nodded, digesting the information. “I believe you, Ginnie.” She took a deep breath and let it out in a sigh. Then she leaned forward and looked Meredith straight in the eyes. “The truth is, Craig was murdered. He was murdered because of something that he discovered while he was working for a pharmaceutical company called MediSign. And the Andersons were killed for the same reason.”

Again, Ginnie blinked. If the color had drained from her face the first time, she looked positively ghostly now. “M-…” She stammered, her mouth went slack, she blinked again, and then she tried to speak once more. “Murdered?” Her voice was so soft now, if they hadn’t been alone in a very quiet room, the other two would not have heard her.

Annabelle nodded, once. “Yes.”

“They killed my mother for something on her laptop,” Dylan said. “We think that it was something Craig Brandt gave to her or told her. They killed my dad six years later – the day before yesterday – because he found the laptop.” He stopped and licked his own lips, looking down at the table for a long while before he went on. “Do you have any idea what-”