Between Worlds (Pendant Series Book 3) Page 10

  The two men shook hands and then Gonzalez left us alone.

  I sat in bed, staring at the detective in bewilderment as he greeted me with a warm smile. I couldn’t return his smile. It seemed my face no longer knew how to make that expression.

  Instead, I just gaped. I was emotionally numb and wondering what Detective Albright was doing here.

  “Have you gotten yourself a lawyer yet, Miss Sinclair?”

  I shook my head no as I pushed a loose strand of hair back behind my ear. “You heard me ask Chrissy to contact Adrian about an attorney. I’m assuming she didn’t since I still haven’t heard from him.”

  Just mentioning my best friend’s name was causing my hands to shake with anger. Or, it could have been the lack of pills my body so desperately craved. Whatever the cause, my trembling fingers would not let up as my mind angrily doted on Christine Simpson Kyle, my best friend and most insidious deceiver wrapped into one. I had called her daily but she refused to accept my collect calls.

  Adrian was my worst enemy but still a better friend than Chrissy, given the circumstances.

  The detective stood silent for a few seconds while he sensed my internal struggle. He seemed to be structuring his next sentence to me, carefully choosing the words he would use to communicate his point. He took a deep breath and began straightening his beige tie. The tie was an inappropriate accessory, being the same color as his shirt, which gave it a sort of washed out and unappealing appearance. In addition, his pants had a couple of coffee stains on them and I had a feeling that this guy was not married, because if he was, I’m sure his wife would have dressed him better before she let him out of the house.

  Men, the clueless gender.

  “Are you sure that the firm’s name was Adley and Ayers?” he asked. “You’re certain that’s where your friend Adrian works?”

  I nodded my head as I watched intently, trying to read the detective’s face. He looked like he knew something I didn’t and he was preparing to release a giant secret.

  I held my breath in anticipation.

  He took a step closer into the room and nodded toward the corner of the bed. “May I?”

  I nodded and the detective took a seat. The springs screamed in protest as his weight sunk them down to the floor. He looked extremely tired, as if he hadn’t gotten any sleep since my arrest. For a brief moment, I almost stood up and asked if he wanted to take a quick nap while I sat in the corner and wrote Chrissy a telegram or something to jolt her into helping me.

  He dropped the bomb. “Your grandmother has been transferred back into the hospital.”

  I jumped up, wondering what could have happened to Granny. Lilly said that Granny would be snapping out of her daze, so why was she now in the hospital?

  “Calm down, Sidney. It’s a good thing. Her vitals are back up and the doctors seem to believe that she may be waking up soon. She’s in the hospital so they can monitor her and make sure they’re by her side when she comes to.”

  I let out the breath that I was holding. “That’s great news. Thanks so much for telling me. Is that why you came here tonight?”

  The detective shook his head. “Unfortunately not. After your arrest, Ms. Kyle had to gather all the legal paperwork to get your grandmother situated. While going through them, she found the legal document which had appointed you as your Granny’s executor of her will.”

  The detective stopped speaking and looked at me. It looked as if he may have been gauging my reaction but I was lost here. I didn’t even know Granny needed an executor. I just figured the position was automatically appointed to me since there were no other family members to assume the responsibility.

  Realizing I was not going to add any input, he continued. “The document was drawn up by a legal firm in Sacramento. Their name is Adley and Ayers. They apparently have been your grandmother’s attorneys for a very long time.”

  “That’s weird,” I answered, struggling to understand why Adrian had left out such an important legal detail for me.

  “Adley and Ayers specializes in family legal services. In fact, they actually handled the adoption paperwork for you after your mother passed and you went to live with your grandmother.”

  I didn’t know what to think of the new information the detective brought to me. “So Adrian can’t help me because he specializes in family law and not criminal cases?”

  The detective held my gaze as he spoke a bit harsher to me. “Adrian cannot help you because he does not work for Adley and Ayers.

  I called the law firm and spoke to Charles Adley directly. He confirmed that he does not, and has never had, an Adrian McAllister employed in his office.”

  That obviously was wrong. Adrian did work for Adley and Ayers. He told me so himself.

  The detective continued what now seemed to be nothing less of an interrogation. “Don’t you think it’s a bit of coincidence that you believed your friend to be working for the same firm who had been deeply invested in your intimate family affairs your entire life?”

  What was he getting at? I had no idea what legal firm handled my grandmother’s business. I was just a teenager too engulfed in my own life to worry about adult legal responsibilities.

  “I don’t understand what you’re saying, Detective.”

  Now, my entire body was shaking and I wished that I had my damn pills, or at the very least, one of Adrian’s cigarettes.

  “Adrian does work for a lawyer’s office. It was just a temporary position, though. Maybe that’s why he wasn’t listed on their employee roster, because he’s an outside contractor or something. He has his own firm, a family business back in New Jersey. He was only working here for a short time until he could handle some personal business and then he was going back home.”

  The detective’s gloomy expression did not change as his hard eyes pierced into mine, “Sidney. I’ve spent a lot of time chasing leads in the state of New Jersey trying to track down this Adrian McAllister character. They’ve all been dead ends. No one but you have seen this guy, I’m beginning to wonder if you made him up.”

  Now my body was burning up. Up to this moment, the entire time I’d been locked in this cell, I had been freezing. Bone chilling, teeth chattering freezing, and now it felt as if someone had cranked the furnace up full blast. I wiped beads of sweat from my forehead.

  “What?” I exclaimed. “Of course I didn’t make him up. Ray’s seen him. Ray punched him in his face outside the bar, remember?”

  “Ray’s not here for me to confirm that story.”

  I started searching my brain for anyone who could collaborate my story and, as I thought about it, I realized that no one else had ever seen Adrian. He always seemed to leave right before Chrissy ever came into the picture. Even though I had always intended to introduce the two, the time never came.

  “Jenna!” I shouted out excitedly.

  The detective took out his yellow notepad and got ready to write down his new lead. I repeated my source. “Jenna. She’s the bartender at The Watering Hole. The first night I met Adrian, I had Jenna send a drink to him on my behalf. She’ll remember. Check with Jenna, she’ll tell you that Adrian’s real.”

  The detective scratched some notes on the pad just as Gonzalez approached the cell. “Time’s up, my man.”

  The two men shook hands and the detective promised to check in with me tomorrow to report his progress.

  Chapter 16

  Paint it Black

  The third day in jail began just like the last two. I was awakened at dawn by the freezing temperature of the cold cell as I struggled to keep warm with a single cotton blanket that had been issued to me.

  Were the taxpayers that broke that we couldn’t afford a thicker blanket?

  Finally, I gave up on the concept of any comfortable slumber. I’d gotten up and attempted to start my day. Sleep had turned into my only salvation and I was saddened I could not escape back into it.

  Being awake tormented me as my mind flipped back and forth from the loss of Ray
to my abandonment by both Adrian and Chrissy. I wished so hard that I could just close my eyes and allow all of my days to pass in the wistful flashes of my subconscious. It was funny how my dreams formerly served as nothing but a nuisance as they refused to allow me a full night’s rest, but now they were my friends, my only escape out of this living hell.

  And in those dreams I had always gotten to see his face again.

  I know I shouldn’t be thinking of him. It was his fault I was in this situation in the first place. But his absence made everything so much worse.

  Where was he?

  If he really was Samael and I was Eve; how could he leave me?

  How could he have spent his entire existence from the beginning of time searching for me and then leave me once he found me?

  Especially after he had finally made me believe him.

  The meeting between Albright and Jenna did not go as well as I had expected. It turned out she did recall me buying a drink for someone that night at the bar only her memory of what happened was significantly different than mine.

  “Jenna insisted there was no man that fit Adrian’s description at the bar that night,” the detective stated as he peered down at me. “She confirmed she remembered that night vividly because she was surprised when you had offered to buy a man named Jason, not Adrian, a drink at the bar. She was caught off guard because she didn’t think Jason was your type.”

  “Jason?” I spit the name out of my mouth as if it were poison I was ridding from my body. “I didn’t buy Jason a drink. Jason reached over and stole the drink I had bought for Adrian.”

  Now I was livid as the shaking in my hands began to start back up again. I despised that potbellied man Jason and Chrissy and her ugly tattooed friend Dave for trying to set me up with him.

  The detective didn’t stop with just one blow. He unleashed wave after wave of them. His next one was a tsunami.

  He laid a photograph on my bed. It was a picture of a large, white house with boarded-up windows. The yard had not been tended to and the overgrowth was beginning to climb its way up the large staircase to the red front door. My breath was caught in my throat as I continued to stare at what I was seeing here.

  The detective said flatly, “I took this picture yesterday.”

  I was dumbfounded. “You’re lying.”

  “Sidney, I need the truth from you. Everything you’ve told me up to now has been inaccurate.”

  I could hear the strain of impatience in his voice. “As you can see, no one has lived in the McAllister house for years. No one has seen you with this Adrian McAllister person and even you admit that you haven’t seen him yourself in days.”

  “I don’t understand what you’re suggesting,” I gasped, my breathing ragged.

  I couldn’t tear my eyes from the picture. Strangely enough, it reminded me of the drawing in Adrian’s book of the overgrown Garden of Eden. This picture could not be current.

  He zeroed in on me. “You claim that Adrian killed Ray, correct?”

  Now I began to get irritated. Detective Albright seemed to be interrogating me and I thought he was here because he cared about my well-being. I thought he wanted to help me. Most importantly, I thought he believed me.

  I stared at him, my eyes now cold and full of mistrust. “I don’t claim, Detective, I know. I was there and I saw what Adrian did with my own eyes. Adrian killed Ray right after he killed his sister, Lilly Lavelle.”

  Now the detective didn’t bother to mask his frustration as he slammed his hand against his knee in exasperation, “We only found Ray’s body. Lilly is another person who seems to be a ghost in this story.”

  Finally I’d had enough of the detective belittling me. I sat back and crossed my arms, indicating that we were finished here. “A ghost…maybe that’s what they both are.”

  Wrapping up our meeting, Detective Albright stuffed his yellow notebook back into the front pocket of his wrinkled button-down shirt and turned to me one last time. “Ghosts or not, someone is going to have to answer for what happened to Ray Ryker up there in that mausoleum.”

  I didn’t care to continue this conversation anymore, it was apparent that the detective was no longer on my side. I turned my gaze, refusing to look at him as I answered. “Well, it looks like that someone will be me.”

  I buried my face into my pillow and I heard the metal gate roll open as the detective’s footsteps faded away into the distance.

  I had never felt more alone in my life.

  I sat in my cell for hours after Detective Albright left. I couldn’t believe what had transpired here. None of it made sense. I had been inside of that house hundreds of times, it was lived in. The front yard was well-manicured, the windows were cleaned. The structure he had shown me in the photograph was nothing more than a dilapidated building.

  It was not Adrian’s house.

  I felt like I was losing my mind. As if the last six months were nothing but a lie. The detective was basically telling me Adrian wasn’t real. Dr. Scott revealed to me that the courts were checking my mental competency.

  Maybe I was crazy after all.

  Did I imagine Adrian?

  Would that explain all of my unanswered questions that I had for him?

  What about all my dreams and the book that retold them so vividly…how he had ended up connected to Lilly, Ray’s mistress? Adrian’s explanation about everything was so intimately complicated to say the least. If I believed his story that would mean I believed in sorcery and magic, and soul-creating and demons and eternal darkness, even possession.

  But if I believed the singular explanation of what Detective Albright was suggesting, that would mean a much simpler answer.

  I was crazy.

  But if Adrian was all in my mind, then who killed Ray?

  Chapter 17

  Bury Me in Smoke

  Any feelings of excitement to visit with Dr. Scott quickly dissipated after my meeting with Detective Albright that morning.

  When Gonzalez came to retrieve me from my cell, I could barely drag my tired legs into the visiting room. All I wanted to do was go back to sleep. I didn’t want to be a part of this world anymore.

  “Pick up the pace, Sinclair,” the pudgy guard barked. “The doctor has better things to do than wait for you all day.”

  The verbal insults only made me walk slower. What more could possibly be done to me at this point?

  Finally my gaze set upon the well-dressed professional that was seated at the steel visiting table and my emotions began to slightly soften. The doctor’s hair was worn in the same style as yesterday but she upped her dress suit to a more daring color…

  Gray.

  She smiled upon meeting my gaze but I just acknowledged her with a slight nod as I took my seat across from her.

  Gonzalez shuffled off to go harass other inmates.

  “Did you sleep well?” Doctor Scott leaned forward, her eyebrows furrowed as she looked me up and down. I would almost believe that she genuinely cared for me if I hadn’t known better.

  I shook my head, still avoiding her eyes.

  “Why not?”

  I really didn’t feel like talking to her today, but it didn’t seem I had much of a choice in the matter. I was at their mercy now. Sadly, I was no longer a person with the privilege of options.

  I let out a loud sigh and answered honestly, “The dreams.”

  I shifted uneasily in my seat, trying to gauge her reaction before continuing. She wore her poker face well. “They keep me awake.”

  Pressing the top of her pen in preparation to write, she asked for clarification. “What kind of dreams?”

  I shrugged.

  Did it really matter what kind of dreams?

  She had asked me what had kept me awake at night and I answered her question. Why couldn’t we just leave it at that? Growing agitated by her persistence, I answered shortly, “The kind that repeat themselves.”

  “How long have you been experiencing them?”

  I shrugged
again. I had hoped she would have taken a hint that I really didn’t care to discuss them.

  No such luck.

  Dr. Scott peered over her glasses at me, serving notice that she did not intend on going anywhere until I began to dish it out. I sat back and crossed my arms. “I don’t know. A long time.”

  I could be stubborn, too.

  Opening the familiar manila folder, Dr. Scott began examining the pages, obviously wanting to ask more but getting her facts straight first. I rolled my eyes as I thought that this woman should have done her homework before coming here today.

  “Before your relationship with Ray began to disintegrate?”

  I flinched at the use of his name as well as her choice of verb she had chosen to describe our relationship.

  “I suppose,” I answered, in a barely audible voice.

  Aware that she’d rattled me, she tried a different approach. “What was the main focus of these dreams?”

  “Love, I guess.”

  Scribbling away just as ferociously as the day before, she continued her questions without as much as a glance in my direction. “Are they about you and Ray? Perhaps that was your subconscious looking for other ways to work out your differences?”

  There it was again, that unwavering speculation that Ray and I were so terrible for each other.

  “The dreams had nothing to do with Ray,” I shot back.

  She heard something edgy in my answer. She stopped writing and looked up at me intently as she tried to read my body language. I remained frozen in place, not allowing her to see anything.

  “You seem tense, Sidney, is this conversation upsetting you?”

  What the hell did she think? She came in here with her fancy clothes, scribbling secret notes in her pad, and pretended to know all about my and Ray’s intimacy. Of course this conversation was upsetting me. How dare she even speak Ray’s name. She didn’t even know him.

  “You know nothing,” I said furiously.

  She placed her pen down on the table. “That’s a fair statement. I only know what I’ve read in your file and what I’ve seen in the media. I’m hoping you will fill in the rest of the details for me.”