What She Forgot Read online

  What She Forgot

  Mind's Eye Investigations, Volume 1

  Margaret Lashley

  Published by Zazzy Ideas, Inc., 2019.

  Copyright 2019 Margaret Lashley

  MargaretLashley.com

  Cover Design by Melinda de Ross

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  For more information, write to: Zazzy Ideas, Inc. P.O. Box 1113, St. Petersburg, FL 33731

  This book is a work of fiction. While actual places throughout Florida have been used in this book, any resemblance to persons living or dead are purely coincidental. Unless otherwise noted, the author and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and in some cases, the names of places have been altered.

  Dedication

  TO BLATCH AND SMALLS.

  You know who you are.

  Praise for What She Forgot

  "MARGARET LASHLEY HAS crafted a nail-biting psychological thriller that’s both fast-paced and thoughtful. Fans of Melinda Leigh will love how Lashley spins the tale—full of suspense, insight, and moments so tense you'll have to turn the page to find relief. She’s an exciting new voice in the psychological thriller genre." A.C. Fuller, best-selling author of The Crime Beat and The Alex Vane Media Thrillers

  “Brilliantly written, this is a powerful tale of disturbing family dynamics, and pure evil. The plot is tight and multi-layered and is filled with riveting characters.” S. Fields

  “The reader will enjoy the artful assembling of each of the players...each with their very own conflicted psyche and/or normal human confidence issues. Even with all of its complexities the story line rolls out smoothly. Pick up this book and enjoy the fluid storytelling and vexing story.” J. Hoffman

  “WOW, WOW, WOW! This book is flipping awesome!” W. Siesicki

  Contents

  Dedication

  Praise for What She Forgot

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  Chapter Sixty

  Chapter Sixty-One

  Chapter Sixty-Two

  Chapter Sixty-Three

  Chapter Sixty-Four

  Chapter Sixty-Five

  Chapter Sixty-Six

  Chapter Sixty-Seven

  Chapter Sixty-Eight

  Chapter Sixty-Nine

  Chapter Seventy

  Chapter Seventy-One

  Chapter Seventy-Two

  Chapter Seventy-Three

  Chapter Seventy-Four

  Chapter Seventy-Five

  Chapter Seventy-Six

  Chapter Seventy-Seven

  Chapter Seventy-Eight

  More Mysteries by Margaret Lashley

  Excerpt of The Child Within

  About the Author

  Prologue

  SHE NEVER KNEW WHEN the spider would come.

  Silent. Patient. Crafty.

  Stealing up on her, just when she let her guard down.

  By the time she felt its presence, it was always too late. She was already trapped—already writhing in its grasp, its silken threads winding around her.

  Cinching her arms.

  Paralyzing her legs.

  Silencing her screams.

  Over and over she would tumble in the darkness, as if pitched into a well—plunging headlong into thick, black waters. Too thick to breathe ....

  Then it would come. That tingling feeling. Like goosebumps, but on the inside.

  Prickling her lungs.

  Tickling her stomach.

  Fibrillating her heart.

  It was joy.

  It was peace.

  It was where she wanted to be.

  Chapter One

  “PAIN FEELS LIKE IT’S in the present. But its roots are in the past. To move beyond pain, we must let go of the fantasy that we can create a better past.”

  DEANNA YOUNG’S FINGERS curled tightly around the silver pen clenched in her fist. On a normal day, she’d have been adeptly taking notes with it, etching dark lines of ink onto paper, constructing labels for the oddities stored away inside her client’s skulls. Claustrophobia. Aerophobia. Mysophobia. Cynophobia.

  But this wasn’t a normal day. This was what Dr. Young called an edge day—a day where, like earth’s own restless tectonic plates, endings butted up against beginnings to form dangerous rifts ... chinks in carefully constructed armor ... dark, fear-filled chasms of change.

  Deanna knew firsthand the uncertainty wrought by change. It could make a quivering child of the bravest of souls.

  Yet change was coming.

  She could feel it ... the telltale pressure building in her core.

  Something had to give. Something had to die before something new could be born.

  She only hoped it wouldn’t be her.

  But there was no turning back now. The journey ahead had already been set into motion. A dangerous trek along the fragile edge of a psychopath’s abyss ....

  “Dr. Young?”

  Deanna inhaled sharply. Her focus returned to the slim, middle-aged man stretched out on the couch in her office. “Pardon me. Just thinking,” she said.

  She straightened her padded shoulders, crossed her legs, and tugged the hem of her skirt until it covered her knees. Swallowing the dry knot in her thro
at, she reminded herself she only had to make it through the next ten minutes.

  Then she’d be free.

  “So, tell me,” she asked the man. “How did it make you feel to not be there when your mother died?”

  As a psychologist practicing in New York City, mommy issues weren’t the worst neurotic complaints Dr. Young had to deal with from her patients. But they were definitely among the most common. However, when it came to the man on the couch, mommy issues were the least of Joel Bernstein’s problems.

  “I feel guilty,” Bernstein answered. He chewed his handsome, dimpled cheek. “She’ll never forgive me for not being there.”

  Deanna pursed her lips to erase a bitter smile. If I could extract forgiveness from the grave, I’d be a millionaire. Why is it people always think they have forever to set things right?

  She knew Bernstein had yet to accept the fact that his psychological scapegoat had slipped its leash. His mother was gone. Forever. She couldn’t very well taunt him from beyond, could she? No. From now on, Bernstein would have to find someone else to blame for everything that went wrong in his life.

  “Guilty?” Deanna prompted, wondering if the man was capable of such a feeling. He probably read the term in a magazine.

  She shifted her legs and sat up straight in the purple, wingback chair. Chosen for its subliminal effect, the high back and royal hue of the chair were suggestive of a throne—the person seated in it, therefore, an authority figure to be respected. Deanna wondered if Bernstein saw her that way.

  “Yes, guilty,” Bernstein said.

  “Tell me why.” Deanna knew the possibility existed, at least in theory, that Bernstein would use his mother’s death as a breakthrough—an opportunity to take responsibility for his own life. Then again, there used to be a theory that the moon was made of cheese ....

  “Why do I feel guilty?” he asked.

  “Yes.” Deanna bit back a pensive scowl. Was she to blame for her patient’s lack of progress, or was he? “Why guilty?” she coaxed, careful to avoid any inflection in her voice.

  “Because I didn’t get to say goodbye,” Bernstein said. “She called me. Right before she, you know, died. But I didn’t answer. I was ... preoccupied.”

  Deanna studied Bernstein’s face. His lips were curled into a subtle, twitching smile, as if he were straining to hold in something. Tears? Laughter? She couldn’t decide.

  “Preoccupied?” Deanna prompted.

  “Screwing,” Bernstein delivered like a punchline. “She choked to death on a chicken bone while I was getting laid.”

  Bernstein put his hand to his mouth as if to stifle a sob. Or was it a chuckle?

  To Deanna’s trained ear, his voice was devoid of genuine emotion—as if he’d rehearsed the words into a mirror until they’d lost all meaning. Was her patient trying to insulate himself from the trauma of his mother’s death, or had he actually felt no trauma at all?

  “The timing of your mother’s death wasn’t within your control,” Deanna offered, trying to give Bernstein the benefit of a doubt—the slim chance that he hadn’t just turned his mother’s death into some kind of macabre joke.

  She took a deep breath in an effort to center her own emotions. But as she studied the handsome man lying on her sofa in his Armani suit, anger rose in her throat.

  Bernstein’s good looks and impeccable attire were elegant camouflage.

  The enticing bait of a human predator.

  Deanna knew Bernstein’s police record. Two counts of exposing himself in public. One count of grabbing a woman’s breasts in a public washroom. An allegation of trying to force a young girl into his Mercedes ....

  Like his fine clothes and practiced smile, the charges filed against Bernstein were only the outward, visible ones. The tip of his proverbial iceberg of a heart. What else had he done that no one had reported? Or that his family had paid to ‘make go away?’ What perversions festered below his charming surface veneer? What else had he gotten away with?

  Deanna’s gut boiled with disgust. As a psychologist, it was her job to remain impartial, to withhold judgment. She was supposed to help Bernstein. The trouble was, over the past two years, she’d come to the slow realization that it wasn’t help he was seeking.

  Bernstein wasn’t interested in the ways and means of how his personal traumas—real or imagined—affected the way his mind worked. Her coaching to that end had been nearly pointless. How could she help him when she couldn’t even lead him to the first step of the healing process? How could Bernstein change for the better when he didn’t think there was anything wrong with him?

  “Thanks, Doc,” Bernstein said as he lay comfortably on the sofa. “I knew you’d see it my way.” He stretched his arms overhead, joined his fingers together, and rested his head in the cradle formed by his hands. It was the classic posture of confidence. The body language of someone who felt he was in complete control.

  Deanna studied Bernstein, utterly perplexed. Outwardly, he appeared bewitchingly normal. A bit restless in his mannerisms, perhaps, but certainly not someone one would peg as a sexual predator. Yet behind that crisp blue suit and twinkling brown eyes lurked a heart and mind that saw others as nothing but objects to quench his twisted desires. He was a sociopath, a borderline psychopath.

  Deanna tested the tip of her elegant writing instrument against her thumb and watched the shallow indent it left on her skin turn from white to pink. Suddenly, she wondered if the pen’s point was sharp enough to penetrate Bernstein’s throat. Puncture his thorax. Stop him before he could ....

  “Doctor Young?” Bernstein said.

  Deanna cleared her throat. “Excuse me. I’m sorry for your loss, Mr. Bernstein. When is your mother’s funeral?”

  “It was yesterday.” Bernstein let out a mournful sigh, but a furtive glance at Deanna’s legs gave away his lack of sincerity.

  His lurid gaze sent a fresh shiver of disgust quivering down Deanna’s back. Unnerved, she stood up.

  “Oh. If I’d known, I’d have sent flowers.” As she smoothed her skirt with fumbling fingers, the pen fell from her grasp. She let it lie where it landed on the rug. Leaning down to pick it up would have put her in too vulnerable a position.

  Bernstein sat up on one elbow, his brow furrowed above his carefully groomed eyebrows. “We’re Jewish. We don’t do flowers. And my mother had to be buried by sundown. It was all prearranged.”

  “I see. I’m sure the service was lovely.” Deanna walked over to her desk and sat down behind it, glad for the barrier of wood and metal between them.

  Bernstein’s face twisted into something mimicking despair. “I’m so sorry. I should have let you know about the service. Now I’ve disappointed you, too.”

  Transference.

  The term flashed in Deanna’s brain like a fire alarm, catapulting her nervous system into high alert. Tread lightly. He’s setting his trap.

  Deanna was nearly certain Bernstein’s sorrowful expression was nothing more than a mask of manipulation. He’d played the pity card before. But this time, the situation was different. For both Bernstein and Deanna, this was an edge day—a day for big changes. And Deanna needed to make hers first, before it was too late.

  Deanna knew Bernstein blamed his mother’s neglect for the person he was. Perhaps he was right. The jury was still out on whether sociopaths were born that way or created by early childhood circumstances. Either way, now that his mother was gone, Bernstein would be seeking a new muse. If Deanna wasn’t careful, he’d transfer his attention to her. She would become his new scapegoat—his new person to point the finger at as the root of all his evil deeds.

  She forced a sympathetic smile. “You haven’t disappointed me. This has nothing to do with me.”

  “Sure it does.” Bernstein fortified his mock sorrow with a hint of menace. “You’re supposed to help me.”

  Deanna spoke softly, careful not to use Bernstein’s name and thus create a false sense of intimacy. “My job is to help you help yourself. I’m going o
n vacation for the holidays. I’ve arranged for you to see another therapist in my absence. He’s very good.”

  “No.”

  The word sounded like a growl. Bernstein sat up on the couch and glared at Deanna. His hands curled into fists.

  Deanna swallowed hard, knowing a wrong move now could set off an emotional powder keg. “Yes,” she said a bit more firmly. “It’s all been arranged, I’m afraid.”

  Bernstein’s eyes narrowed. “You’re afraid?” The edges of his mouth curled. He rose to his feet.

  “It’s a figure of speech,” Deanna blurted, too alarmed to chide herself for her blunder. Bernstein was a mere six feet from her now. Standing upright, he appeared much taller and stronger than she remembered. He picked up the silver pen she’d dropped.

  “How long will you be gone?” he asked, and took a step toward her desk, tapping the pen in the palm of his hand.

  Deanna forced a reassuring smile. “Just two weeks. You won’t even miss me.”

  “Yes, I will!” Bernstein’s face grew red and twisted, the face of a child who wasn’t getting his way.

  Deanna tore her eyes from the pen glinting in Bernstein’s hand like a knife blade. Should she shout for help? Her secretary, Sally, was at her desk just outside the door. Unless she wasn’t ....

  Deanna’s pulse thumped in her throat so loudly she wondered if Bernstein could hear it. “Like I said. It has already been arranged. In fact—”

  Bernstein took a step closer. The hand he held the pen with began to rise ....

  Panic shot through Deanna, scrambling her thoughts. Should I scream? Keep calm? Ask for the pen back? Why the hell did I break the news to him all alone?

  Before she could react, Bernstein’s angry eyes turned soft and pleading. “Please, Dr. Young. I can’t make it that long without you.”

  Deanna swallowed against a stubborn, dry knot. She spoke slowly, each word a struggle to push through the aching tightness in her throat. “You are a strong, dependable man, Mr. Bernstein. You’ll do fine. And Dr. Lawrence Filbert is someone you’ll relate well to.”

  Bernstein scowled. “Filbert? Relate to him? Why? Because he’s nuts? You think I’m nuts, don’t you?” He took another step toward her.