Save Me: A dark romantic thriller (Novel) Read online

  “What time are you open till?” He jiggled the car keys in his pocket.

  “Four. Why?”

  “No reason unparticular. Just wondering.”

  “Have you decided what you wanted?” she asked, still shunning eye contact.

  “No. Not yet. You guys have so much stuff; I don’t even know where to begin.”

  An American-style bakery, Stella’s had been around since the early 1940’s. It was a favorite hot spot among the locals.

  Troy, however, hadn’t been to this bakery in years. So why was he here now? Because Ashley’s mother, whom he barely knew, had begged him to come. The weekend before Claire Whittaker had stopped in Crown Jewel and had told Troy that her daughter was down in the dumps. She went on to explain that Ashley, a few months ago, had entered group therapy. Then had suddenly stopped going because she had decided it wasn‘t for her.

  When Troy had asked Miss Whittaker why she had sought him out, she had said that she did not know where else to turn: My daughter trusts you, Troy. You saved her life. And believe it or not, you might be the only person Ashley will open up to. She won’t open up to me. And she doesn’t have any friends she can turn to either. But worst of all, my daughter becomes so moody, sometimes she ignores her baby. And when she does, it breaks my heart.

  Strange. Claire Whittaker thought Troy might be able to get through to Ashley. At the moment, he did not share that confidence.

  Now that he stood in front of her; Troy did not know what to say. Furthermore, Claire Whittaker did not want her daughter to know that she had put him up to this. Thus, Troy had to act like this encounter was purely coincidental. For all Ashley knew, he was just another customer looking to satisfy a sugar craving.

  “Have you gotten any closer to making a decision?”

  “I’ll tell you what,” he said. “How are these cookies next to the crumb cake?” He gently tapped the glass.

  “Which ones?” she asked, putting the bottle of Windex down.

  “The cookies with the colored sprinkles.”

  She nodded indifferently. “They’re too sweet for my liking. But they’re a big hit with the kids.”

  “Speaking of children, Ashley, how’s your baby?”

  “My child is your typical newborn. You have your good days and you have your bad days. Overall though, I’d have to say the baby is doing well.” She paused. Then, in a theatrical voice, added, “As well as one would expect without a Daddy.”

  Whoa! Troy thought. Maybe that was it. Perhaps Ashley was still grieving over her husband. The last time Troy had spoken to her, when Ashley was in the hospital, she had treated him like a hero. Now she was making him feel unappreciated. Her icy snub had him reeling. Not only was he disappointed, he was also hurt.

  For five minutes, no matter what he said, Troy couldn’t get through. The walls around her were impenetrable.

  Fed up, he paid for his cookies, bid Ashley good-bye, and then walked out. On Friday, Ashley’s mother planned to stop by the market again, to ask Troy how things had gone. He felt bad knowing that he would to have to tell Claire Whittaker that his surprise visit to the bakery had yielded disastrous results. That her daughter had essentially ushered him out the door.

  Then, to Troy’s astonishment, as he was preparing to get in his silver Subaru, Ashley came running outside. The bell that hung above the entrance jingled passionately.

  “Wait, Troy!” she hollered. “Wait! I didn’t mean to be so rude.”

  Dumfounded, he scratched his head and said, “I wasn’t thinking you were rude.”

  “Please forgive me. I was being a complete jerk. And for that I apologize.”

  “Hey,” He shrugged. “No harm done. Apology accepted.”

  Relieved, Ashley smiled. “I’ve got an idea, would you like to start over? Maybe come back inside for a cup of coffee?”

  “Coffee?”

  “Uh huh. On the house.” Now she seemed to be flirting. “If you think Starbucks makes a great cup of Joe, you should try ours.”

  Troy elected to go back in. Yet, they didn’t have much of a chance to get caught up. Halfway through their coffee, a bunch of customers came in, forcing Ashley to return to her responsibilities.

  As she headed back to the counter, Troy said, “Would you like to get together over the weekend?”

  “Sure. I’d love to. What’d you have in mind?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, standing up. “Do you drink?”

  She grinned. “Do I drink? That’s a funny question. Of course I drink. Like a fish.”

  He laughed. It was nice to see Ashley smile. They agreed to meet at Lloyd’s, a trendy nightclub up the highway, ten minutes away. According to their roadside billboard, the club Saturday evening was featuring a talented jazz assemble. Troy thought Ashley might enjoy the laid-back atmosphere.

  “So it’s a date then,” she said. “I’ll see you Saturday night, at nine.”

  “Okay,” he told her, as he went to leave. “Say hello to your mother for me.”

  I hope she doesn’t think this is going to be a real date, Troy thought. Maybe I should have mentioned that I have a girlfriend.

  CHAPTER 24

  As soon as Ashley had returned home from work, she burst through the front door and said to her mother, “Guess who I saw today?”

  “I have no idea. Who?” Claire sat in the living room, at her desktop computer. She was on EBay, trying to pawn the Star Wars items that she had picked up at the garage sale. Rare posters and action figures.

  “Guess.”

  “Sweetheart. Just tell me. I can’t think of anyone you might have ran into today that would make you this excited.” The last time Ashley had acted this jovial in front of her mother was when Kimberly had been born, and the doctor had assured her that the baby was in perfect health.

  “I’ll give you a hint, his name starts with a T.”

  “I’m sorry Ash. I’m still coming up blank.”

  “Troy Young.”

  “Get out!” Claire swung her chair around. “Your Knight in Shinning Armor?”

  “Yes. I was shocked myself.”

  “Wow! Where did you bump into him?”

  “At the bakery. He came in today.”

  “So how’s he doing?”

  “From what I gather, fine. He told me to say hello to you.”

  “Oh. He remembers me.” Claire casually leaned over and gave their new puppy, Albert, a frisky pat on the head. The small collie panted, wagged his tail, and tried to jump up on the chair. “I feel privileged.”

  “Get this; we’re going to meet up over the weekend.”

  “Really. Where?”

  “Lloyd’s nightclub. On Saturday night.” Still beaming, Ashley sat down on the couch. She unclasped her ponytail, allowing her sunny-blonde hair to gush down her back. Her shoes and socks she slipped off and left on the carpet.

  “The two of you are going to a bar?”

  “Yeah.” Ashley did not see why that was a problem. Where else did young people normally go for entertainment? “What’s wrong with that?”

  “Nothing. That’s just not what I expected to hear.”

  “What’d you think I was going to say?”

  “That you were going to meet at a restaurant or something.”

  “Well, in a way we are. They serve dinner at Lloyds. Do you realize mom this will be the first time I’ve been on a date since high school, with someone other than Peter?”

  “This is a date?” Claire questioned, her voice teeming with uncertainty.

  “Yes.”

  “Troy specifically used that exact word, date?”

  “No. Not that exact word. Jeez! Why do you seem so surprised?”

  “No reason.”

  “Although I plan on buying him a few drinks. It won’t be the more traditional date that you’re accustomed to: with the guy always paying the tab.”

  “I see.”

  Suddenly Ashl
ey looked down at her lap, and then started to cry.

  Her mother was confused. “Ash, what’s wrong?”

  “I was just wondering, do you think Peter would have wanted me to get involved with someone else? I mean I know he would have wanted me to eventually. But do you think it’s too soon? Do you think I’ve waited long enough?”

  “Oh honey. I definitely think you’ve waited long enough. Peter wouldn’t have wanted you to be lonely. He would have wanted you to move on. And I’m not just saying that, because I want you to find a father for Kimberly. I realize this isn’t 1970 anymore. I just want you to be happy.”

  How weird and wonderful. Was it possible that Troy Young entering Ashley’s life again was divine intervention? God’s way of reminding her that not all men were evil?

  For months Ashley had convinced herself that the only thing the male species wanted from her was her body, and that they could care less about her as a human being.

  CHAPTER 25

  On Thursday afternoon, Claire Whittaker went sailing with her friend Rachel Gilbert. Rachel’s husband Mark had elected to stay home. He had informed the ladies that he couldn’t go because he had a lot of yard work to tend to.

  “No, no,” Claire was saying, “I didn’t beg this guy Troy to ask Ashley out. All I did was ask him if he would talk to her.”

  “How do you know it’s a date?” Rachel questioned, genuinely curious about her gal pal’s troubled daughter.

  They were on the Chelsea River, about six or seven miles south of Wichita. The weather was partly cloudy, with a brisk, temperate breeze that kept the medium-sized schooner traveling at an efficient pace. Inundated with white caps, the big river smelled of the surrounding marsh.

  “Because Ashley said it was.”

  “Then maybe it is an actual date.” Rachel speculated, while guiding the steering wheel. As the sailboat, the Bold Clipper, merged forward, it rocked leisurely from side to side. Salt spray rose from the bow.

  “It can’t be a date. I distinctly remember Troy telling me he has a girlfriend. Someone named Sarah.” Claire, in shorts and a marmalade collar shirt, sat at the stern on the leather-stitched seat. She wore a wide-brimmed hat, to keep her hair from being blown into oblivion.

  “Would you like a soda?” Rachel asked, after digging her hand into the Igloo cooler and withdrawing a cold Diet Pepsi.

  “No thanks,” said Claire, gazing at the lovely homes, buildings, and trees, along the remote shoreline. “I’m not thirsty.”

  “I am. Even though there’s a swift breeze, it’s still humid.” Admittedly overweight Rachel had a pleasantly aged face and grayish black hair that was long, but never seemed to be because, like this afternoon, she often had it clamped up with a barrette. Nearly forty years before, when she had owned a Volkswagen bug, and had worshipped bands like the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane, Rachel, although a New Jersey native, had, for a while, lived in San Francisco. It was on the legendary street of Haight Ashbury, where she had met and had fallen in love with her husband Mark. They had one adult child, Kendra who lived in Virginia, where she owned a small gift shop.

  “I also think Ashley’s been using drugs,” Claire abruptly announced. “Except, I couldn’t tell you what kind of drugs. Or where she might be getting them.”

  Glancing up toward the masts (the sails rippled loudly like a windblown flag), Rachel shook her head. “I thought you told me she was drinking a lot?”

  “She is! But I also think she’s taking drugs.” Claire was more concerned than angry.

  “And when did you come to this conclusion?”

  “Honestly, it’s a gut feeling I’ve had for a couple of months. However, Sunday night, when she got back from Brad and Eve Ferguson’s party, that’s when my suspicions became confirmed.”

  “How so?”

  “At about midnight I walked into the family room. Ashley was on the couch watching David Letterman. When I tried to talk to her, she was incoherent. I didn’t smell any alcohol. But boy was she ever high on something.”

  Drugs were no mystery to Rachel. During the late 60‘s, she and Mark had experimented with everything from marijuana, LSD, to cocaine. Sometime around 1975, they finally got clean.

  “Were her eyes open?”

  “Barely.”

  “Well, based on what you‘re telling me, “Rachel said, again sticking her hand into the cooler. Aside from soft drinks, they also had lunch, ham sandwiches and Breyers yogurt. “Whatever Ashley is taking must be some kind of downer.”

  “Like what?”

  Rachel shrugged. “Not sure. It could be a number of things. Sedatives. Tranquilizers. Pain killers. It could even be an over the counter drug like Nyquil . . . Did you confront her about this?”

  “I tried to. Except I didn’t want to start an argument. As you know, whenever I get on her about smoking, Ashley goes ballistic.” Suddenly Claire remembered something she wanted to show Rachel. From her decorative handbag, she removed a folded sheet of paper.

  “What is that?” Rachel inquired, squinting. She did not have reliable vision. In fact, if this were evening, Rachel would be wearing glasses.

  “It’s something Ashley wrote in her journal.”

  “Are you putting me on, you actually tore a page out of her diary?”

  “No. This is a photocopy,” Claire articulated. “I’m not dumb, Rach. If I would have torn this out, she would have known I was snooping.”

  “Still, that seems like such a violation. A woman’s diary is supposed to be sacred.”

  “Just read it. Please! I need your advice. If you read what she wrote, you’ll totally understand why I’m so concerned.”

  “All right. If it‘ll make you happy.” Reluctantly, Rachel unfolded the sheet of paper. “I have to tell you though, I feel awfully funny about this. If someone ever spied on my private thoughts, I’d be livid.”

  Ashley’s journal entry read:

  Sunday. July 17

  Lord help me!

  Yesterday I was down in my art studio and the ghosts tried to make me play Russian roulette. They want me to kill myself. I don’t know what to do!

  “This is very disturbing,” Rachel said, handing the diary entry back to Claire. “Far more disturbing than I thought it would be. Especially knowing she wrote that recently.”

  “I told you. Ghosts wanting her to kill herself. I’m not even sure what to make of that.”

  “Me either. What are you going to do?”

  “I want to get rid of Ashley’s gun. If she’s hearing voices, I’d feel a lot more at ease if she didn’t have that gun around.”

  “I don’t blame you, Claire. If I was in your shoes, I’d probably do the same thing . . . Where does she keep the gun?”

  “Usually in her nightstand drawer. But it’s not in there now. I checked. It’s not in her art studio either. Which leads me to believe it must be in her car.”

  “Eventually, when you find it, how will you go about disposing of it?”

  “I haven’t yet decided.”

  “What about out here?” Rachel suggested. “You could throw the gun overboard.”

  The Chelsea River, which could almost take them to Delaware, covered some fifty miles.

  “Hey, that’s a good idea,” Claire said, relieved. “Where we are now, how deep would you say it is?”

  Rachel had to calculate. “Here. I’d say about sixty feet. That’s deep though. If you drop the gun overboard in sixty feet of water, it should stay on the bottom for hundreds of years. It would sink in the mud.”

  “Perfect. Then that’s what I’ll do.”

  CHAPTER 26

  Near dinnertime, when Claire arrived home, she was surprised to hear that Eve Ferguson had left a message on her answering machine: “Hi Claire. It‘s Eve. Please get back to me as soon as possible. We need to talk. Thanks.” BEEP!

  Before returning the call, Claire checked to see where Ashley and Kimberly were. She glanced out the kitch
en window and saw that they were in the backyard. Ashley had her easel set up on the deck, and was adding detail to a new painting.

  After allowing the curtain to drop back into place, Claire reached for the phone. Thirty seconds into her conversation with Eve, she uttered, “Your housekeeper what?”

  “Nelly told me Ashley might have been the one who stole the morphine.”

  Claire did not know how to react. “Morphine. What are you talking about?”

  “We’re missing a bottle of morphine from our medicine cabinet.” Eve went on to add that she and Brad believed that the pills had been stolen on Sunday, the day of the pool party. “And I‘m talking about an extended-relief formulation. If you don‘t know what that means, simply put, this is no ordinary pain killer. We‘re talking about some really powerful junk.”

  “Oh wow!” Claire exclaimed, taking the cordless phone into the family room. Tensely, she sat down at her desk. “And how do you know my daughter was the one who took this stuff?” She thought back to her conversation with Rachel. It could be a number of things. Sedatives. Tranquilizers. Pain killers.

  “Because,” Eve elaborated, “when Ashley was out by the pool, Nelly saw a pill bottle fall out of her pocket.”

  “That’s not really proof.”

  “Not actual proof. But this happened right after Ashley used our bathroom. Which makes the pill bottle falling out of her pocket seem highly suspicious. Wouldn’t you agree?”

  “I suppose.”

  “Although she did tell Nelly the pills were for migraine headaches. Does Ashley take anything for headaches?”

  “Not that I’m aware of,” Claire responded truthfully. “Except for maybe Advil or Motrin.”

  “Well, from what I was told, the pill bottle that fell out of her pocket was definitely not ibuprofen. It was a prescription.” Eve also mentioned, that she had tried to contact Claire earlier in the week, hoping to discuss the matter.