LITMIR.BIZ

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“‘The snake late coil’d.’” Shaun’s voice was hushed and yet harsh at the same time as he read the note over her shoulder.

       At the quote, his father jerked in surprise, his brow furrowed.

       Monica’s fear chilled as she took in Shaun’s burning eyes and pale face. “What is it?”

       “Could I see it, please?”

       Monica handed the notecard to him.

       He studied it with a frown, which deepened as he read.

       “Shaun?” Mr. O’Neill asked. There was an urgent gravity and also a slight quaver to his voice.

       Monica could see the note in Shaun’s hands tremble slightly, and she realized his hands were shaking.

       He glanced at his father, and some unspoken message passed between them. Mr. O’Neill turned whiter than the notepaper and swayed.

       “Mr. O’Neill!” Lorianne rushed toward him and helped him to sit down in a chair.

       “I’m fine.” He waved her away, but his hand gripped the table edge tightly.

       Monica turned to Shaun. “What’s going on?”

       His entire body had become taut like a bowstring. His eyes darted to hers, feral, fierce. Then he blinked, and a steely determination replaced the fleeting wildness.

       “The man who wrote this letter killed my sister.”

       He shouldn’t have said it in front of everyone that way, but the shock had ripped through him like a California breaker wave.

       “Right this way…” The hostess’s voice died away as she approached the back of the restaurant with two lunch customers and saw them all around Monica’s table.

       Lorianne immediately moved to block their view and spoke to her hostess in a low voice. The woman smiled at the couple and said, “If you’ll follow me, we’ll find you a different table.”

       They walked away, but Shaun could see that the restaurant was filling up with people coming in to eat lunch. He reached over Monica’s shoulder and covered the box with the lid to hide the snake from view—hers as well as any of Lorianne’s customers.

       “You have to call the police,” Mr. O’Neill told her.

       Lorianne looked a little strained at the suggestion, but she nodded to Monica. “I remember what the delivery guy looked like—short, really thin, big nose. Brown hair. I’ll talk to the hostess to see if she remembers, too.” She moved away to intercept the woman as she was returning to the front desk after seating the couple at a different table by the window.

       Shaun sat at a seat at the table while Monica pulled out her cell phone, but she dialed a different number than 9-1-1. He was about to ask who she was calling when she said, “Aunt Becca, I’m at Lorianne’s Café. I need you to call Detective Carter and have him meet me here.”

       “Monica, what happened?” Shaun could hear her aunt’s voice through the cell phone, sharp with concern.

       “I got a threatening note.” She opened her mouth as if she’d say more, but then rushed on without mentioning the snake. “He doesn’t need to bring an officer with him. I don’t want to make a fuss and chase away Lorianne’s customers.”

       Her aunt said something briefly and then Monica hung up.

       “So Becca’s still dating Detective Carter?” Shaun’s father said, trying to adopt a normal tone of voice, but Shaun could hear the reedy thread of stress behind his words.

       Monica nodded. “She has his direct number so he’ll be here sooner than if I’d called 9-1-1.”

       Her clear amber eyes found Shaun’s, and he could read the question in them about what he’d said about his sister. “I’ll tell you about it when the detective gets here,” he promised.

       She also called Phillip and canceled the lunch appointment. Shaun’s jaw tightened as he faintly heard Bromley’s voice. Something about an overturned truck. He was probably lying.

       Detective Carter must have been nearby because he arrived at the restaurant within minutes. He pulled off his sunglasses as he entered the dining room, and his gray eyes were filled with concern as he saw Monica. “Are you all right?” he asked, his voice kind.

       “I’m fine. You know Patrick and Shaun O’Neill, right?” She gestured to Shaun and his father, who were sitting at the table. Detective Carter seated himself in the remaining chair. Then she pushed the box toward him and handed him the notecard.

       The detective’s expression grew hard as he read the note, but it grew fierce when he lifted the lid and saw the snake. “Tell me what happened,” he said.

       Monica recited how someone had delivered the gift to the restaurant and Lorianne had carried it to her. “I’ll talk to her later,” he said. “You don’t know who sent this?”

       She shook her head, but her eyes darted to Shaun. “But Shaun mentioned something about his sister,” she told the detective.

       Shaun looked to his dad, whose lined face seemed to have aged a decade. “Tell them,” Patrick said, his voice weak.

       Shaun paused, staring at that hated notecard, gathering his thoughts. Finally he said, “Five years ago, my younger sister, Clare, moved from Sonoma to Los Angeles to work at one of Dad’s hotels and to be closer to her boyfriend, Johnny. She had gotten her MBA the year before, and she was consulting for a free family planning clinic where Johnny was director, which was also down in L.A. But a couple months after moving, she was found dead in her apartment by her roommate.”

       He had to pause, to let the ache in the base of his throat ease so that he could continue. “It looked like suicide—drug overdose. But I knew my sister. She didn’t use drugs. Her roommate said the same thing, and they hung out together a lot. Also, I had spoken to her on the phone the day before. We talked every week. She wasn’t depressed, and she wouldn’t have taken her life.”

       His father nodded slowly. “I spoke to her once or twice a week, too.”

       “When I was going through her things, I found postcards and letters that had been mailed to Clare during the two months before she moved to L.A. and also a few mailed to her L.A. apartment. They threatened her life if she didn’t stop consulting for the family planning clinic.”

       He realized his hand had clenched into a fist, and he willed his fingers to relax. Breathe. You’re just telling the story. Except it hadn’t been just a story to him. It had been a surprising and hurtful discovery to make after burying his only sister. Clare had been the jewel of the family, especially after Mom had died. Losing his sister had shattered them all.

       “Did she file incident reports?” Detective Carter asked.

       “I don’t know if she did for the notes she received in Sonoma,” Shaun said. “I did find a report number in her notebook, but for an incident report she had filed in L.A.”

       The detective scribbled in his notebook. “I’ll look into it.”

       “I confronted her roommate, Angela, about the notes,” Shaun said. “Clare had confided in her about it all. Angela said that Clare had kept this secret from Dad and me and my brothers because we were all too protective of her and we wouldn’t have let her move to L.A. if we’d known.” Shaun fought back the wave of guilt. He had known how desperately Clare wanted to leave Sonoma, which at its heart was a small town despite the heavy tourist traffic. But Clare had been the only girl among four brothers, and their mom had died years ago, so they were naturally a bit overprotective of her. But maybe if they hadn’t been, she might have felt she could confide in her family and Shaun could have protected her.

       “Did the L.A. police look into her death?” Detective Carter asked. “They should have, if she filed an incident report for the notes.”

      

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