“I’ve heard that before,” I said as I looked over to the clock on the mantel. Six-fifty. Come on, Dexter. Come home.
“Aldrich Gainsborough,” he said, following my gaze to the mantel. I was looking at the clock, but he thought I was looking at the photograph of Aldrich Gainsborough in his casket. “He was responsible for all of this.”
“I can see how you would feel that way,” I said as I inched my way back toward the front door.
“Ah-ah-ah,” he said, crooking his finger. “Come this way.”
I looked at his baseball bat and then looked back at the front door. I could make it to the door before he made it across the room. What was he going to do? Throw the bat at me? But what were the chances that I would make it to my car without him catching up to me? In my present condition, there was no way that I could outrun him. No possible way.
In my present condition.
My God, my baby. Fear nearly paralyzed me as I thought about the unborn child cradled inside of me. If something happened to me, it happened to the baby, too. If I died, so did the baby. I tried to push that thought out of my mind, knowing that otherwise I would never be able to have a clear thought long enough to save myself.
Danette. She was in the house. Did I really want her to come out here, though? What if she surprised him and he somehow hurt her?
“What are you going to do? Are you going to say that I, the pregnant lady, attacked your deputy?” I asked.
“No,” he said. “I’ll simply drag him outside and throw him in the river and then I’ll dispose of his car and put out a missing persons.”
He said that so coolly. So calculatingly. It made my skin crawl.
“Why?” I asked. I saw Deputy Russell moving behind the sheriff, but I tried not to let my eyes wander. “Was it the will?”
“Oh, now, why should I tell you?”
“If you’re going to kill me, you can at least let me know if I was halfway close,” I said.
“Why do you care?” he asked with a smirk. “Try living in this century, woman. You might find that you like it.”
The door behind me opened, and in walked Sherise Tyler. I jumped three feet and scuttled farther into the great room. Great. Both of my exits were no longer options. The steps were my only choice.
“Torie,” she said. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
“Which one of you killed her?” I asked, taking my first step up the long stairway.
“I didn’t kill Clarissa,” she said. “I could never do that.”
“Oh, but your ex-husband did, and you were going to let him get away with it, weren’t you?” I asked and took another couple of stairs.
“It’s not like that,” she said. “I swear. Tom and I were getting back together.”
Sheriff Justice moved a few steps into the great room. Sherise looked at him nervously. “Tom, don’t. You can’t kill her.”
“Why did Clarissa cut you out of the will?” I asked. As long as Sherise was willing to talk, I was going to ask questions. Anything to buy time until Dexter arrived.
“When Tom found out that he was Clarissa’s great-grandson he tried to blackmail her,” she said. “He had all of my notes and my research. I was pretty sure that Clarissa had killed my greatgrandfather and MacLean. Thomas took that and went to Clarissa. He told her that he knew everything. He knew that he was the descendant of Gainsborough and that he wanted what he deserved.”
“Shut up!” Sheriff Justice said. He threw the bat onto the floor, and pulled his gun out of his holster and leveled it at Sherise.
“Shut up, Sherise. Do as he says,” I said. I liked him much better with the baseball bat.
“Clarissa bluffed him. Said if he did go to the police or to the newspapers, she would see to it he didn’t get a dime. The old broad bluffed him and won,” she said with a smile.
I took a few more steps up the stairs. “I don’t know if you noticed or not, Sherise. But that really isn’t the type of man you want to be intimate with.”
“We sought therapy. He admited he was wrong and that it was just years of living in poverty that drove him to blackmail her. I believed him,” she said with a slight tremble in her voice. “Come down off the stairs, Torie. I’m not going to let him hurt you.”
“Sorry. Don’t believe you.”
“He can shoot you from down here,” she said.
“Well, at least he’ll shoot me as I’m trying to get away,” I said.
“Thomas, put that stupid gun away. What is wrong with you?” Sherise’s eyes left mine to enforce what she was saying to her ex-husband but he had gone over to the deputy, who was waking up. “I swear, Torie, I didn’t know he was going to kill Clarissa. We started seeing each other again. Somehow he found out, probably through Ollie, that I was set to inherit fifty thousand dollars. That’s the only reason he tried to get back together with me. I didn’t know that then.”
“I feel for you, Sherise, really I do, but I sort of feel for myself right now a little bit more.”
I peeked over the railing to see Sheriff Justice cuffing the deputy.
Sherise walked over to where the telephone was on the corner table and picked up the receiver. “When Clarissa found out that we were seeing each other again, she cut me out of the will. After what Tom had done, I don’t blame her one bit. Thomas became enraged,” she said as she dialed a number. “I guess he thought if Clarissa was dead and it looked like somebody else had done it, I wouldn’t be the wiser and I’d still inherit my fifty grand if the new will disappeared.”
She stopped a moment as she listened to whoever answered the phone on the other end. I took a few more steps up the stairs.
“Yes, could you send a squad car to the Panther Run Boarding-house? There’s been an accident. Officer down.”
She hung up the phone without giving any of the information that I knew the 911 lady would want. Like who she was, et cetera. Sherise started to walk over to the stairs. I wasn’t so sure I trusted her, since I hadn’t heard the other part of her 911 conversation. It didn’t matter.
As she got three feet from the bottom of the stairs, her body was flung back with the force of the bullet that had just left the sheriff’s gun. I turned and ran the rest of the way up the stairs. As I turned and looked down, I saw Sherise’s bloody hand reach up and grab Sheriff Justice by the pants leg and drag him down. Somehow she grabbed his gun and they wrestled back and forth for it.
Sherise was smart, though. While the sheriff had her hand with the gun in it pinned over her head, she squeezed the trigger and shot the entire round into the baseboards. Then she threw the gun across the room. Sheriff Justice kicked her in the face, and she cried out in agony.
Then he headed up the stairs for me. Two at a time. In a matter of seconds I had to make a decision. Go toward the end of the hall and end up where? In one of the rooms with doors that he could kick in. Or I could go into the elevator, take it downstairs, and maybe get to Deputy Russell’s gun before Sheriff Justice could make it down the stairs and through the great room.
I chose the elevator.
Forty-one
The cold metal doors of the elevator shut with a bang that echoed off the upstairs hallway. I hadn’t intended to shut it that hard, but I did. I pushed the down button and pressed myself up against the inner wall trying to catch my breath. Be calm. Be calm.
The problem with this plan was now that I had actually committed to something, I had to go through with it. The elevator landed with a jerk and I reached out to open the inner door. Just as I opened the inner door, Sheriff Justice appeared from what seemed like thin air, and grabbed my left hand. I tried to twist and pull away, but it did no good. A tendon popped somewhere in my lower arm, shooting pain all the way back to my elbow.
He smiled a wicked smile at me and then I saw him reach down ever so slowly, almost in slow motion, and turn the lock on the outside elevator door. It was a sliding lock, not the dead bolt that you needed a key for. I was locked inside the elevator. I was locke
d inside the elevator!
This was not good.
Breathe. Breathe.
Sheriff Justice slowly walked away and disappeared out of sight. Where had he gone? Where was Dexter? I peered down the hallway and realized that I could no longer hear Danette’s music. She had most likely heard the gunshots and turned off the stereo to see if indeed gunfire was what she had heard.
Stay in your room, girl. Stay in there.
I paced back and forth along the elevator floor, working my lower lip between my thumb and finger. Where had he gone? Where was the sheriff?
Deputy Russell’s gun.
Oh, Jesus. I ran over to the Control Panel and punched the up button just as Sheriff Justice came around the corner, took aim, and fired his gun. The bullet ricocheted off the lower part of the elevator as it left the first floor. I cannot express how distressing the sound of a bullet ricocheting is. You’re just going to have to trust me on this one.
Seconds crept by like minutes as I huddled in the inside corner of the elevator waiting for the inevitable. He was going to come upstairs. Of course he would. I was crouched right beneath the control panel so that I could just reach up with my hand and push the down button. One time was all I’d get at this, and then he’d get smart and figure out where I was crouched. I had no choice. Anywhere else and I wouldn’t be able to reach the panels.
Ticktock, ticktock. More time elapsed and still no sheriff. Then, as if I’d asked for it, I heard the swish of his uniform and I slammed the down button. Again, the bullet ricocheted, and this time it lodged in the wooden panel behind me. Oh, that was just way too close.
Now what? How long could I keep this up? How long could I stay one step ahead of him? He had the upper hand. He knew when the elevator was up or down. I had no idea where he was until he fired the gun.
Suddenly I reached up and pushed the up button, thinking that he’d be halfway down the stairs by now and I’d throw him off. As soon as the elevator clicked into the top floor, I started counting to ten and then bam! I hit the down button. I could only hope that he’d just reached the top step.
My heart pounded in my chest, and the blood rushed through my head like a freight train. Just calm down and breathe. That should be easy. All of the Lamaze lessons that I’ve taken? Why the hell couldn’t I breathe?
My blood wouldn’t stop rushing long enough for me to be able to listen. Hearing his uniform swoosh was what had saved me last time. I had to be able to hear. I took a few deep cleansing breaths and then closed my eyes and listened.
Nothing.
Nothing.
Then I heard the cock of the gun and I slammed the up button. God, I couldn’t keep doing this.
I didn’t have to do this forever, I reminded myself. Just until Dexter got here. Or until the sheriff ran out of bullets, but knowing him he had extras somewhere. Maybe Deputy Russell would wake up. But even if he did wake up, he was handcuffed, I reminded myself.
The elevator and I waited on the second floor for a very long time. The sheriff had to be getting wise to the fact that I could hear him. I was calculating his moves because he was making noise. He wouldn’t keep making that mistake. He would eventually catch on and stop making noise.
Maybe he already had.
What to do? If I stayed here and he made no noise, he’d have me. I wished I had my purse with me. It was sitting on the dining room table. I had a compact in there. I might be able to see him if I had that with me. I had to do something. I couldn’t just sit here. He was going to come after me and I had no way out of this blasted elevator!
I pushed the down button.
I pushed the down button and Sheriff Thomas Justice stood waiting for me as the elevator hit the floor. There was no way I could get the elevator to go back up before he could fire off a round or two. He had me.
Instead of a gunshot, the most peculiar sound came from the sheriff. A thud and then a moan, and then he fell to the floor. The gun made a very light double thump as it hit the floor and bounced.
“Torie?”
It was Danette.
I stood up, tears running down my face. “Oh, my God. Danette. Get me out of here.”
Danette stood there with the baseball bat in her hand, tears streaming down her face, as well. I don’t know which of us had more tears.
“Oh, Torie. I. . . I. . . ” she said and hiccupped. “I watched him going up and down and the elevator going up and down and up and down. When he ran upstairs . . . that last time . . .” Hiccup. “I ran to go for help and saw the other deputy in there with the baseball”— hiccup—”bat.”
“That’s great. Tell me about it later, Danette. Please get me out of here. If you don’t get me out of here I’m going to scream!”
I screamed that last part of the sentence and it got her attention. I was like a crazy woman with my hand wrapped around the bars on the elevator, shaking it. No, rather, I looked more like a chimpanzee. And I was going to start climbing the damn doors, pregnant and all, if she didn’t get me out of here.
“Uh . . . where’s the key?” she asked, and wiped her nose on the back of her hand.
“My purse. In the dining room.”
I stood there and watched the sheriff as he lay unconscious the whole time it took Danette to get my key ring and get me out of the elevator. It was at that moment that Dexter Calloway came in, followed by the police and an ambulance. I would have only had to hold on three, four, five more minutes at the most, if Danette hadn’t conked the sheriff on the head. I’m not sure I could have. I’d played all of my trump cards.
Three cheers for hormone-pumped teenagers who can’t face reality.
Forty-two
Elliott stood on the stairs of the Panther Run Boardinghouse waiting to see me off. I couldn’t leave without seeing it again. I had to see it, with its rusted screens and cracked paint. I had to look out upon the lynching tree, the Gauley River running slowly behind it.
I loved West Virginia. It was the land of my forefathers, and their blood ran in me so deep that I knew this was home the minute I’d seen it for the first time as a child. It’s peculiar the way things work. Southeast Missouri is my home, too. The home of my paternal ancestors. The place where I grew up. I am that plateau of high country on the edge of the Ozarks in Middle America. And yet, I am Appalachia, too.
I suppose it works the same way genetics work. You get your nose from your father and your eyes from your mother. An equal partnership. It’s what makes us who we are.
I would miss this place. I knew that I wouldn’t make it back here for another five or so years. And that left a big old ache inside of me.
“Elliott,” I said. “It was a pleasure.”
He reached down and gave me a big hug, careful not to squeeze my arm that was in a sling. “Next time you come to West Virginia, call first. I’ll go on vacation and up my life insurance policy.”
“Ha-ha,” I said. “You weren’t the one trapped inside the elevator.”
Gert stepped out of the boardinghouse onto the front porch with Lafayette following close behind. She wore a yellow flower in her hair that I’d seen Lafayette pick earlier in the morning. The bump on her head was almost gone.
My stuff was packed, even the things I had decided to keep from inside the boardinghouse. Dexter had packed them all up, safe and sound. Speaking of Dexter, he also made his appearance on the front porch.
“Nice meeting you, Mrs. O’Shea,” he said and held out his hand. I shook it and smiled.
“Nice to meet you, too,” I said.
“You sure you’re not due for another six weeks or so? You look awfully big and you’re carrying awfully low.”
“Well, I suppose there is always the possibility that something somewhere got screwed up. I think I look so big because I’m short,” I said.
“Well, have a safe trip. We’ll see you again.”
I nodded to him, although I wasn’t sure if or when I’d ever see him again.
“So, we really did it, didn’t we?
” Elliott asked. “We really figured it out.”
“Yes, we did. I can tell you that I couldn’t have done it without you. You were awesome. You, the man,” I said.
“Oh, yeah?” he asked. His chest puffed out about five inches and he smiled from ear to ear. After a moment of thought he spoke again. “What do you think will happen to Sherise Tyler?”
“You mean after she gets out of the hospital and finishes the umpteen reconstructive surgeries she’s going to have to have done on her elbow? I’m not sure. She wasn’t really an accomplice to the murder. She only suspected it was the sheriff, and what could she do? Go to the sheriff? I think she’ll be all right,” I said. “At least the deputy is okay. I mean, what’s a concussion when he could have been floating in the river?”
I looked around, again. I tried to soak it all up to take home with me.
“Well, Gert, are you ready?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said. “Get me the hell out of here.”
I couldn’t help but laugh at her, as did Dexter and Elliott. Lafayette didn’t think it was very funny. Oh, and Lafayette had come forward and said that Edwin was the one who had conked my grandmother over the head. Lafayette had apologized profusely. Maribelle would barely look at us all morning. And Edwin? Well, Edwin was long gone. Who knew where he was?
We stepped down into the yard and had made it all the way to the car when Danette ran out of the house and ran over to the car. Of course she ran. The whole time I was here I don’t think I saw her walk anywhere. She was always running.
She held her hand out and offered me something brightly colored. I took it and said, “What’s this?”
“I just want you to know that you’ve given me faith that just because you’re over thirty you don’t have to be a big dork. You’re the coolest,” she said and hugged me.
I unfolded the brightly colored fabric and held it up. It was a tie-dyed maternity shirt.
“I made it myself,” she said.
“Oh, Danette. I will cherish it always. I’ll even wear it when I’m not pregnant,” I said. And that was no lie, because with all of the weight that I was gaining, I probably wouldn’t fit back into my normal clothes for another two years.
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