The Real Werewives of Vampire County

I threw the door open and squinted against the bright light. All it took was one quick glance in the kitchen to see the power hadn’t gone out in the whole house. Just the basement. Lucky me. I looked down the steep staircase. The light spilling from the floor above illuminated part of the rubble at the bottom. Looked like one whole section of the cubbie wall had fallen. I was damned lucky I hadn’t been standing there when it had given way. I might have…. I could have been….

If I’d been standing just a few feet over, I very well would have been the second woman to die in this house.

Another coincidence?

Feeling a little sick, I flopped onto a bar stool and let my head fall. It landed on the cool granite countertop.

I’d almost died.

Was it an accident? Or not?

I sat there, stunned, staring at the back of my eyelids for who knew how long. A knock at the front door brought me out of my stupor.

I opened my front door to discover I was having guests for an early lunch. Samantha, Lindsay, and Erica were standing on my porch, each of them holding a covered dish.

“I brought a salad,” Lindsay said. “That’s one thing that not even I can burn.”

“Pasta from Juliano’s Restaurant,” Erica said.

“And I brought dessert,” said Samantha, following the other two ladies into the house. “I hope you don’t mind our little surprise visit.”

“No, I don’t mind at all.” I shut the door and followed them in the kitchen.

Finally, one of them clued in on my dazed condition. “Christine, are you okay?”

“Um, I’m not sure. Something just happened. Downstairs.” I pointed and all three of them looked toward the basement.

“What happened?” Lindsay asked, plunking the salad bowl on the counter. “You look absolutely petrified.”

“I think I almost died.”

“What?” Lindsay rushed to me, eyes flying over me, probably looking for injuries.

“I went downstairs to work and the light went out. It’s freaking dark down there when there are no lights. And then I was trying to get back upstairs but there was a crash, and, and …” I swallowed but my mouth and throat were stone-dry. Lindsay rushed to the refrigerator, grabbed a water bottle, and handed it to me. After thanking her, I continued, “The built-in shelf fell, right in front of the stairs. If I’d gone the right way, instead of back—I got a little turned around—it would have landed on me.”

All three women gaped at me. Then two of them looked at Erica.

Quietly, she said, “Adam built those shelves.”

“We didn’t think about him,” Lindsay said.

“Michelle would let him into the house without a second thought,” Samantha said, softly.

We all looked at Erica.

Erica shook her head. “No, it couldn’t be Adam.”

“Were you home with him that day?” Samantha asked.

“No, I wasn’t.” Erica fiddled with her hair.

“Then you can’t know that for sure. Right?” Lindsay asked.

“I know he wasn’t home,” Erica repeated, sounding absolutely certain. We all waited for her to tell us why she was so sure. She sighed. “I came home early that day. His car was gone.”

“Maybe he drove it around the block and parked it?” Lindsay reasoned.

“No, he didn’t do that.”

Everyone, including me, gave Erica a pitying look.

“Dammit, don’t look at me like that. I’m not fooling myself. I know for a fact that Adam wasn’t home because I sent him and the kids to my parents for a long weekend. I wanted some time to myself.”

Okay, that made sense. But why had it seemed so difficult for Erica to spit it out? She was acting guilty, like she was hiding something.

“That was the weekend I found out Matt was cheating on me for the first time… .” Lindsay said softly. She seemed to be talking to herself, not to anyone in particular.

Now I understood why Erica had tried to avoid telling us she’d been home alone.

Lindsay lifted her gaze to Erica but didn’t say a word. I think she understood, too.

“We should eat before everything gets cold.” I jumped to my feet. After setting out all the essentials and pouring drinks, I sat down at the dining table with my three friends. Over heaping plates of pasta, we talked about the case. Turned out the doctor was a dead end. Erica had been able to sweet-talk Theresa into checking his schedule that day. He’d delivered not one, not two, but three healthy baby boys that day. He didn’t leave the hospital until after five P.M. And that could be confirmed.

The doctor wasn’t the killer.

Which left … the three women sitting around me and … ?

Josh skulked into the kitchen just as I was about to say something. He looked … strange. Tense. His eyes snapped to mine. They were dark. Cold. Empty.

That was one person we’d never considered.

“Josh … ?” I said.

He knew the victim.

He had access to the victim.

But two years ago he would have been just a child. Much too young to do anything so horrid.

A sick feeling swept through me.

“No school?” I asked.

“I’m sick.” Josh jerked his gaze away and left the room. A chill skittered through my body.

Could it be Josh?

“I don’t know what the problem is with Josh lately,” I grumbled, not really expecting anyone to respond. “I thought we were getting along okay, but the last few days, he’s been so … tense.”

“What if it was Joshua?” Lindsay whispered as if she’d read my mind.

“Why would he kill his own mother?” I asked, afraid to hear the answer. Lately it seemed he’d gone out of his way to stay away from me. But that was expected, normal. After all, he was a preteen. They were prone to mood swings. And getting adjusted to having a new adult in the house took time. There’d been no sign of instability, no sign of hostility. At least nothing out of the ordinary. Every teenager got cranky sometimes.

Could a ten-year-old child really kill his mother? Could a child live with that kind of guilt for years? Would a child who had killed his mother even feel guilt? How would he hide what he’d done from everyone?

“Erica, I started to tell you something the night of the party,” I said, intentionally shifting the conversation. I wasn’t comfortable with the direction my thoughts had drifted.

Erica nodded. “Of course, Josh,” she said, ignoring me. “We should’ve thought of that possibility sooner.”