The elevator slowed to a stop, there was ading, and the doors whispered open. She leaned out, looked around, anddammit, they still hadn’t replaced the lightbulbs.
Surely, that was a liability issue, right?
She couldn’t stand there all night, so she blew out a frustrated sigh and clicked on the flashlight in her left hand. In her other hand, she held the pepper spray, her thumb hovering over the button on the top, and left the relative safety of the elevator to make the trek to her car.
Her back stiffened and she lifted her chin in an effort to exude as much confidence as possible while trying not to give away that her insides were jiggling like Jell-O. Her hazel eyes scanned the parking lot, and her kitten heels clicked on the cement in time with the hammering of her heart.
I am confident. I am tough. I am not to be messed with.She chanted this over and over again in her head.
Her sensible, mid-size crossover SUV came into view, and the front end was cloaked in near darkness. As she got closer, something seemed … different about it. She quickened her pace and stopped short a few feet away from it. She slowly circled her car as she ran the beam of the flashlight over it from the roof to the ground.
All four of her tires had been slashed.
Her immediate thought was to lock herself inside and call a tow truck. So she fumbled with her key fob as she hurried around to the driver’s door and pressed the button. The horn gave a quickhonk, she swung open the door, and the overhead light came on.
She jolted back a few steps.
The glow from the dome light gleamed off a long, shiny blade lying on the front seat of her car. The knife had a small chunk missing from the handle, exactly like one she kept in a knife block in the corner of her kitchen counter.
Her hand flew to her mouth on a gasp, and eyes wide, she spun around to scan the parking garage.
Perhaps Charlotte wasn’t being paranoid after all.
CHAPTER FOUR
Severalhourslater,afterwaiting for the tow truck and arranging for a replacement vehicle, Charlotte drove the compact loaner car into the narrow driveaway between her townhouse and the one next door. The sun had already begun to peek above the horizon, casting ominous shadows everywhere she looked.
The tow truck driver’s brother happened to own a used-car dealership with an auto repair shop, and he’d agreed to meet them there. The whole mess ended up costing her almost a thousand dollars to replace all four tires. Problem was, they wouldn’t be in stock until next week.
Fortunately, he’d taken pity on Charlotte and given her one of his loaner cars to use until hers was ready. The thing wasn’t much to look at, but the engine purred like a brand-new car, and he wasn’t charging her to use it.
After the night she’d endured, she was cranky, exhausted, and badly wanted a shower. And she had to come up with a believable story to tell her mom about why she was driving a loaner car and why she would be out of town for a few days. Because the second Charlotte saw that knife on her seat, she decided it was time to make herself scarce, at least until she figured out what to do next.
Charlotte couldn’t just call her mom and say, “Hey, Mom, someone slashed all four of my tires and left the knife on the seat for me to find. So I’m just going to hit the road for a while. See ya!”
One option was to tell her she was going on a work trip. That would be believable because she was frequently out of town for work.
She absolutely abhorred lying to her mom, but she could not tell her the truth. The people involved had enough power and wouldn’t hesitate to go after her mom if they thought she knew something.
Charlotte leaned over to the passenger seat, grabbed her messenger bag, and set it on her lap. She unclipped the flap and made sure the knife was still there, then she closed it and looped the strap over her shoulder. She’d found a plastic grocery bag under the seat in her car and had carefully slipped the knife inside.
After securing her pepper spray in her hand, Charlotte did a quick look around outside. Her eyes narrowed at all of the areas still in shadows, and, seeing nothing, she swung her door open and climbed out of the car. Her heart raced as she navigated her way through the narrow space between the car and her neighbor’s wall. She hurried to the front of her townhouse, through the wrought-iron gate, and up the cobblestone path. She jammed her key into the lock, let herself inside, and quickly locked the door behind her.
Charlotte let out a long breath, then listened for any sounds that didn’t belong.
There was the familiar hum from her fridge down the hall and the steadytick tick tickof the swinging pendulum on the cuckoo clock in the front room.
About four years ago, some attorney’s office delivered a box to Charlotte’s mom’s house and informed her that her mother, Evelyn Cavanaugh Stewart, had died.
This hadn’t exactly been heartbreaking news to Charlotte’s mom. She’d ended all contact with Evelyn years earlier because of her prolonged denial of what her second husband, Franklin Stewart, had been doing to his stepdaughter.
According to the attorney, when the estate sale company was doing an inventory of Evelyn’s belongings in preparation for the sale, they found the cuckoo clock in the attic. Inside the box was the sweetest handwritten note to Charlotte’s mom from Albert Cavanaugh, her mom’s biological father.
Happy Thirteenth Birthday, to my dearest Donna,
I found this clock in a shop during my trip to Germany, and as soon as I saw the little sheep and duckies going around and around, I just knew you would love it as much as I do. I hope you smile and think of me every time the little birdie pops out and says, “Cuckoo.”
I love you very much, my little Cuckoo Bird,
