CHAPTER FIFTEEN

A muffled but loud hammering noise gradually seeped into her awareness. Once she acknowledged it, she also became aware of a steady drilling beep that drove into her head like someone pushing a long thin nail into her ear.

Allison sat up disoriented, in the grips of a decongestant hangover, and stared stupidly around at the room.

She had made herself go to bed after listening to the tape. Since she hadn't been the least bit sleepy, she'd taken a sinus-relief tablet to help her along. Her sinuses were fine, but the drowsiness side effect dragged her down like an anchor into a thick, dreamless darkness.

The banging came again, accompanied by an unintelligible but irritable voice through the wall.

Her alarm clock was going off. Had been going off for a solid fourteen … no, fifteen minutes. The banging on the wall was Mr. Kaminski next door. He kept his television on at full volume until four in the morning most nights, but if anyone made noise before ten on a Saturday, he would raise the goddamn roof.

She turned off the alarm. The pounding continued for another half a minute, then ceased, and blissful quiet descended. Still, she knew she could count on finding a nasty note tacked to her door later, or a complaint made to Teddi Lace. Or both. Why not, Mr. Kaminski? Live a little.

A shower and two cups of coffee helped to clear away the fog. Clad in stretchy leggings and a long sweater, Allison was back in her dilemma about the blonde's purse.

The smart thing to do would be to turn the purse and everything in it over to the police.

Thinking about the police made a flutter of panic beat in her belly, as if she had swallowed a large moth.

Not that she had anything against them in principle. Police, not moths. Not that she had anything against moths either …

She drank a third cup of coffee.

In principle, she believed that a strong police force was a good thing. Mr. Colucci at the locksmith shop had a brother-in-law who was a cop. Officer Tony Rugerro sometimes came into Sherwood Second-Hand. He liked to browse through the old furniture for pieces that could be fixed up, and always carried a box of like-new stuffed animals in the trunk of his patrol car in case he met any distraught kids on the crime scenes.

Allison liked Officer Rugerro, but whenever he was in the store she got clammy all over, just waiting for him to wander past the rack of purses and recognize one from a robbery report.

She could, she supposed, claim that the buttercream leather purse and its contents had shown up in the donation box. That would be the easiest way to get rid of it.

But what about the money? Who, really, who in their right mind would dump a purse containing that kind of cash? Even the most honest of persons would have a hard time passing up such a windfall. You sometimes heard of thrift store employees finding overlooked valuables in coat pockets, but a wad of twenty-five thousand dollars was a hell of a lot harder to overlook than a ring or a folded hundred-dollar bill.

What, then? Hold onto the money, but turn everything else over?

And if she held onto the money, what would she do with it?

Off the top of her head, she could list fifty people in this neighborhood alone who could benefit from a surprise bonus.

Eva, for example, and Hector. With that kind of cash, Eva could afford a bigger place and actually have her brother live with her, to keep him away from the bad influences of his stepfather and soon-to-be-released convict brother.

Or Martha. Even if Martha wanted to live in her vacant lot, it couldn't be good for her and she couldn't really be happy.

Or the Strevyks … or Needles and Tisha … or even Jamie Tremayne. Indeed, practically everyone she knew on Dunley Street could make good and welcome use of twenty-five thousand dollars.

For that matter, if she was being truthful with herself, so could Allison "Scoot" Montgomery. She didn't need a nicer apartment or a car … but if she had those things, she could bring her sister over for visits. Spend weekends with her. Summers, even. It would be a way to erase some of the loneliness and misery from Missy's eyes. A way to get her out of that luxurious, loveless house for a while.

But she couldn't keep the money all for herself and not share with her friends and neighbors … and she couldn't realistically share with her friends and neighbors. What would she tell them? That she happened to find twenty-five G's and wanted to share the wealth? That she'd won the lottery? She never played the lottery and they all knew it. Even the most grateful of them would have to be a little suspicious … and someone might say the wrong thing to the wrong person.

"For God's sake!" she said into the stillness of the living room. "Forget about the money! The money's the least of your worries right now!"

While that wasn't entirely true, it was true enough for her to push the issue aside and turn her attention to what really mattered.

The gun.

The gun and the folder.

A man was marked for death, as crazy as that sounded. Someone wanted him killed and was willing to pay big bucks to see it done.

Allison wasn't naïve enough to believe that the people who'd hired the woman called Jade would, upon learning of the mishap, shrug and say, "Oh, well, never mind then … let him live." There had been steel beneath the smoky sexiness of Jade's lunch date's voice. He wasn't someone to change his mind.

No, whatever else happened, somebody wanted the man in the photographs dead, and would find some other way of accomplishing it.

For all Allison knew, he might be dead already. Was it so far-fetched to think that Jade, alarmed by the loss of her purse, had decided to strike fast before the target could be warned?

She smacked herself in the head. That was what she should have done first! If he was dead, it was her fault.

When she opened the folder, the photos slid out. Handsome man, blond curls, bronze tan, excellent teeth. Looked a little like the actor Heath Ledger had. Expensive clothes. The watch on his wrist looked like a Rolex. Pricey sailboat.

He appeared to be the kind of guy that might have been buddies with her Montgomery-side relatives. From money. From influence. Tennis, yachting, polo. His nickname was probably Chet, or Chas, or Skip … if he had a sister, she was Tiffy, or Muffy, or Babs.

Was it possible that she might even know him? Had they been guests at the same parties? If he was local, it wasn't that far-fetched. She'd certainly met plenty of men like him. But she didn't recognize this specific one.

On one of the pages of information, she found his name.

"Benedict Westbrook."

She didn't know the name … yet felt the nagging, niggling feeling that she should.

The address was in Palmyra Hills, which Allison knew to be an area of opulent mansions, waterfront property, and general extravagance.

New money, as her father might say with a sneer. The Montgomerys had made their fortune several generations back. Their particular branch of the family was not associated with the department stores but with canned fruits and vegetables, frozen dinners, and one of the earliest patents on a type of circuit used in microwave ovens and other small appliances.

So this Westbrook could be a computer mogul, an e-commerce kind of guy. Or … hadn't she only a few minutes ago been imagining herself sharing around the money and claiming she'd won the lottery?

If that were the case, then it was even less likely she might have met him. In her parents' hierarchy of worthiness, the old-money families whose current descendants never had to do a real day's work but could coast on the inheritance and investments were the top dogs. Big-money celebrities, sports figures and high-tech dot-commers were next, because while they might not have the bloodline, they had at least earned their fortunes and their way to the top.

But the lowest, the worst, the intolerable were the ones who made their fortunes out of the blue and with little apparent effort. Allison had once overheard her mother and her sister-in-law talking disdainfully about a woman who'd won a million dollars on a game show and was buying a nearby house. This woman even had the temerity to want to join the country club. As Susan Montgomery had put it, "She suddenly has a million dollars and thinks that makes her good enough."

It hadn't been long after that, come to think of it, that Allison had moved out and been glad to go.

No, there was no room in the Montgomery world view for lottery winners – not even those who scored the multi-million-dollar jackpots – or game show contestants, or people who successfully got enormous lawsuit settlements because they'd spilled hot coffee on themselves. A gold-digging bimbo who married an elderly oil tycoon and then had him drop dead a week later of a sexual-overload stroke was more welcome in their society. Heck … a woman like that would receive a certain grudging respect, because she had earned it.

If Westbrook was one of 'those' people, it made sense that Allison might have heard his name but wasn't able to connect it to anything. He wouldn't have been a guest at the house, but someone who might have been mentioned in passing, with that lofty arrogance only the truly lofty spoiled rich could achieve.

She had to do something.

Do what?

Allison folded her legs tailor-fashion, braced her elbows on her knees and propped her head up on her hands.

Do something.

Uh-huh, sure.

Call him up, why not? "Hi, Mr. Westbrook … you don't know me, but there's someone trying to kill you."

Send him a fortune cookie. Beware of petite blondes with guns.

Mail him what she'd found?

That had possibilities. Package it all up, and send it to the Palmyra Hills address with an anonymous letter. When one of his own guns fell out of the envelope, it'd have to make him sit up and take notice.

Except then, the police would get involved. And no matter how careful Allison was, they'd trace it back to her. Somehow. Her fingerprints were all over everything. Even if she wiped off each article, would that work on paper? Didn't the oils from the fingertips soak in and leave an indelible mark?

There would be hairs, fibers from her clothes and carpet. Handwriting analysis of the letter, the address … even if she typed them, or used a computer, there were ways to ferret out the truth by the kind of ink, the brand of paper. She watched television. She knew what they could do.

The greater pains she took to cover her tracks, the more it would make the detectives think she had something to hide.

Which, okay, she did. But that was beside the point. She was trying to do the right thing here, damn it! Trying to save a man from being murdered!

It just so happened that she was also a petty criminal.

"Sheesh, Allie-girl," she muttered, using Uncle Bob's pet name. "What's more important here? Your freedom or a guy's life?"

Then there was the scandal to think about, what her family would –

Allison veered her thoughts sharply away from that, thank you very much.

What, then? What to do?

She was never going to come up with an answer just sitting here. She needed to get out, away from this mess. She needed to get some air, some movement.

She needed to be Scoot for a while.

**