String of Lies

by Hughes, MaryEllen

  But Jo couldn’t buy that. Randy’s general history was well known in the town. He must have been aware that Jo, though new to the area, would have eventually learned at least the basics of his background. So pretending little connection to Parker Holt, Jo felt, must have sprung from guilt.

  Randy surely knew that Xavier was strongly suspected by the police, and that Carrie and Dan were suffering severe damage by association. Jo’s concerns, he would have seen, would clearly have been for her friends. Randy may not have been aware of the extent of Jo’s investigations, but he would have realized she was someone to be careful around.

  But his lie about when he was last inside the Holt’s house was, for Jo, the most incriminating one. Randy’s comment on the glass candleholder, she figured, must have slipped out before he realized its possible significance. When he did, he clearly tried to cover by changing the time he had nearly broken the piece. Except he unwittingly trapped himself by not knowing how recently Mallory acquired the candleholder.

  Jo sighed deeply. She had liked Randy, had felt he had potential for getting his life back on track. She would never have thought him capable of murder. What had derailed him so completely? Neither of the murder victims were sterling characters, but what about them could have drawn such violent actions? She arrived at Main Street and gradually braked as she approached her shop’s parking lot. Jo signaled for her turn, then slowly drove in, feeling as weighted as if she were the one carrying her car instead of it carrying her. Uncovering the dark side of a liked and trusted individual, she was finding, was not a particularly satisfying coup.

  Jo parked next to the Craft Corner’s building and she opened her door. Engrossed with her dour thoughts, she stepped out, then remembering her lunches, leaned back for the paper bag. As she did, a voice spoke chillingly close to her ear: “Just stop there.”

  Jo felt the pressure of the knife before she saw it. She froze, then turned her head slightly to see Randy inches from her, his breath puffing into her face. He pressed a very large, very lethal-looking knife against her side.

  “Be quiet, or I’ll have to use this,” he warned, and reached past her into the car, grabbing her keys from the ignition. He gripped her arm tightly with one hand, the other holding the knife, and jerked her toward the battered pickup that Jo had failed to notice as she pulled in, parked as it was beyond a large van.

  “Randy—” she began, but he showed he meant what he said by pushing the knife into her jacket enough that she heard its nylon fabric pop.

  “Just move,” he repeated, and Jo did.

  Randy pushed her toward the passenger’s side of his pickup, Jo’s eyes searching the lot for someone, anyone, who could help, but without success. He yanked open the door and shoved her forward.

  “Get in,” he said. “All the way over.”

  Jo climbed up and into the truck, then scrambled awkwardly over the console to get to the driver’s seat as Randy pushed, while at the same time gripping her tightly. Randy took the passenger seat and pulled his door closed.

  “Drive out onto Main,” he said, his knife still pressing at her side. “And don’t try to signal anyone or I will use this.”

  “Where—” Jo began, the knife instantly stopping her.

  Her foot fumbled for the pedals, which were out of reach until she yanked the seat forward. Then she turned the ignition and put the truck into reverse.

  When Jo turned her head to look back, she got her first full look at Randy’s face. It wasn’t the face of the man she knew, the man who had come to her shop that first day, nervous and grateful for the promise of a job. This was the face of a total stranger. Though the features hadn’t changed, the person behind them definitely had. The fear Jo had felt from the first, suddenly tripled.

  “Turn right,” Randy said as they approached the street.

  He held the knife against her with his right hand and gripped the collar of her jacket with his left. Jo checked in each direction but could see no pedestrians who might notice them and help her. The drivers of the few passing cars kept their eyes on the road ahead of them, Jo and her captor apparently catching no attention. She turned the truck onto the street and pulled away from the Craft Corner, feeling her heart sink with every inch of road she put between her and all reasonable hope of aid.

  Jo drove up Main, staying, at Randy’s orders, within the speed limit, while at the same time her mind raced, searching for a means of escape. Any scenario she came up with, though, ended with the high probability of her blood fatally spilling over the inside of the truck, so she drove on, hoping against hope that she’d still find a way out of this.

  Jo drove straight when Randy told her to and turned when Randy told her to turn, gradually suspecting where he was taking her. This was confirmed when they pulled onto her street. He told her to slow down as they approached her house. Banks of snow lined the curbs, but the laughing children that had so recently played in them, building snow forts and tossing snowballs, had gone off to school, their parents most likely away as well at their jobs. The street was empty of both neighbors and traffic, and Jo turned into her driveway without, she feared, a single eye witnessing it.

  Randy switched the knife to his left hand and fumbled in his pocket. Jo glanced over to see him pull out her automatic garage-door opener, which he must have snatched from her car’s visor when he grabbed her keys. He pressed the button to raise the garage door, and when it reached its top, grunted, “Go.” Jo did.

  As Randy closed the door behind them, Jo stared forward, hearing the noisy clang behind her as the door hit bottom. It sounded like the clang of a prison door, which was what her once-cozy home had just become—her prison. But what was her sentence to be?

  Life, or death?

  Chapter 25

  Randy got out of the truck and raced to the driver’s side. He yanked Jo out and dragged her over to the connecting door, unlocked it with her keys, then pulled her into the kitchen. Randy stopped, glanced around, then dragged her through the small kitchen into the living room. He pushed Jo onto the sofa as he remained standing. It was a relief for Jo to at least have that knife out of her side, but it flashed menacingly as the steel caught the sunlight beaming through her windows.

  “Don’t move,” Randy warned. He lurched over to the nearby windows to pull her blinds closed, after first checking the window locks, until Jo sat in murky dimness. He then did a rapid run-through of the other rooms of her small house—her bedroom, the spare, and her bathroom, all mere steps from where she sat—before returning to the living room. He sank into a chair facing her.

  “Randy, this is crazy and you know it.”

  “Shut up!”

  Jo noticed for the first time that he was sweating. Beads of it had formed on his forehead despite the cold temperatures outside. His eyes twitched nervously as his gaze darted about the room, and the heel of one foot bounced against the floor. He pulled a small whiskey bottle out of his jacket pocket, uncapped it, and put it to his lips. He evidently had been drinking from it already, as he tipped it high for a final swallow.

  “Randy, this won’t solve anything. You’re only making it worse.”

  “What do you know about making anything worse?” he shouted. “I’ve killed two people already! I can go to the chair for that. Do you know that? One more won’t change anything. But you’re the only one who knows I killed the other two. I get rid of you, I’m home free. You’re my only problem.”

  Jo waited, giving him time to calm a bit. What was his plan for getting rid of her? Did he have a plan? His edginess suggested he hadn’t formed one yet. If she could keep him talking he’d have less time to come up with one. She quietly asked, “How did you know I’d figured it out?”

  Randy stared at her, scowling. “Lisa. I went to pick her up and she told me about you asking questions. She told me what she said about Parker and me being friends.” His mouth twisted contemptuously. “Friends—hah!”

  “Parker wasn’t a good friend to you? I mean back then?�
��

  “Parker was a leech. A 100 percent, effing, blood-sucking leech.”

  This was good; he was talking. Jo needed to keep him going. “You mean Parker used you?”

  “Yeah, he used me. Just like he used everybody his whole life. Only I was too dumb back then to see it.”

  “You were a kid, then, Randy. Kids don’t pick up on things like that. Not right away.”

  Randy scowled at her. “Maybe. He was scum, though.” “But there’s more to it, isn’t there? You didn’t kill Parker because he made you feel used. What did he do to you?”

  Randy’s foot began bouncing again. He got up and began pacing Jo’s small living room, the knife gripped tightly in his hand.

  “You got any beer here? Anything to drink?”

  “No, I don’t.” Jo knew there was an unopened bottle of wine in one of her cupboards, a birthday gift from Carrie and Dan, but she didn’t mention it.

  He stared at her as if searching her mind, then said, “Shit!” He pulled out his whiskey bottle, tried for a few last drops, then threw it across the room. He got up and walked to a front window, pulling the drapery aside an inch and looking out, then went to Jo’s back door, whose window looked out into her backyard, and did the same. No one knew they were there, so what was he expecting to see? His fear, Jo suspected, was probably as great as her own, but for different reasons.

  Randy returned to his chair and sat down, holding his knife across his lap.

  “You want to know what Parker did to me? Why I killed him? I’ll tell you. You’ll see why he deserved it.” He looked past her and his gaze turned inward, to the past. His voice took on an odd, deadly tone.

  “We used to go out in my dad’s old Chevy,” he said. “It was a piece of junk, but it rode, and that was all we cared about. Parker didn’t have wheels—his folks were too tight—and I did. I shoulda known that was the only thing that mattered to him, but all I knew was I was having the kind of fun I never had before and that was great.

  “Then one night, Parker was home on spring break, his first year at college. We went out and got some beers. We’d driven around thinking we might pick up a coupla girls, but that didn’t work out. So Parker starts asking stuff like how fast would that Chevy go. He’s daring me, you know? Like, ‘Think it’d make a hundred before it shook apart?’ Things like that. I’d been working on it, replaced a few parts, and that kinda bugged me ’cause it was like he was saying I hadn’t made the car any better. So to prove him wrong—and I wasn’t thinking too clear with the beer and all—I drove out to Route 30, which I figured would be pretty empty then—and I revved it up.”

  Randy stopped, wiping sweat out of his eyes. Jo waited, sitting as still as she could, not wanting the slightest rustle of her jacket’s nylon fabric to distract Randy. After a moment he resumed his story.

  “The Chevy was doing good. I got up to eighty, ninety, and it was running smooth. Then, out of nowhere, this car pops up, I dunno, from some side road or something. I swear I didn’t see it until it was too late. I tried. I swerved, but I clipped him on the side, hard, and ran him off the road.”

  Randy’s voice had become shaky.

  “I kept on going, at that speed it was all I could do to stay on the road. But the other guy—I heard later it was some kid coming home from working late at Burger King—he lost control and flipped over into a ravine.

  “I started slowing down. I was going to go back. But then Parker says, ‘What’re you doing? Keep going! You’re just gonna get us in big trouble! Don’t worry about him. He’ll be okay.’ I was scared, I couldn’t think straight so I kept on going, and got home, and hid the car in the barn hoping I could fix the damage to it before my pop saw it.”

  “Was the other driver killed?” Jo asked, guessing as much.

  Randy nodded, rubbing his free hand over his face. “Not right away. He died in the hospital.”

  “But they never found out it was you?”

  “No. Parker said I should keep my mouth shut, and I did. He said I’d go to prison if I turned myself in. It wasn’t long after that my pop had his tractor accident. I kept the Chevy hid in the barn. I didn’t even have time to fix the damage on it. I was scared, ’cause the paper kept printing stuff about how they were still looking for the hit-and-run driver, and putting in stuff about this kid that was killed, how his family was all broken up. It was pretty bad. Then my mom got sick, and I had to get her taken care of.”

  Jo could imagine the turmoil Randy had gone through. Still a kid, with no one to advise him but Parker Holt, who had his own reasons for keeping Randy quiet.

  “You sure you don’t have any beer?” Randy suddenly asked. Not waiting for an answer, he went into the kitchen and threw open Jo’s small pantry door. Seeing nothing besides cans of food, he turned to her cupboards, flipping open doors until he found the wine bottle. He grabbed it, saw it had a cork, and pulled open a drawer, rustling noisily through it.

  “Where’s a damn corkscrew!” he shouted.

  Jo told him.

  Randy shuffled through Jo’s kitchen tools, then finally found what he wanted. He brought it over to Jo, thrusting the bottle and corkscrew toward her, still holding his knife. “Open it.”

  Jo peeled away the foil wrapped around the top of the bottle and worked at the cork with the screw until she was able to ease it out. She held the bottle up to Randy, and he grabbed it and gulped, tipping the bottle upward with his free hand.

  Jo watched from her broken-springed sofa as Randy paced about the room, taking swigs of her wine. Was the alcohol needed to handle the pain of the memories he had dredged up? What else, though, would it do to him? Finally, he stopped drinking and held the bottle down at his side.

  “What did Parker do during this time?” Jo asked, wanting to get him back to his story.

  Randy’s lip curled contemptuously. “Parker went back to college. I thought—I hoped—I wouldn’t see him again. But he showed up near the end of summer, wanting money.”

  “He asked you for money?”

  “Not asked. He wanted it. He said I owed it to him for keeping quiet about the hit-and-run. I gave him what I had. I thought that would be the end of it.”

  “But it wasn’t, was it?”

  “He kept coming back, every time he was back in town from college. I owned the farm by then and I guess he thought I was raking it in, but I wasn’t. I was barely holding things together with the mortgage, the taxes, the help I had to hire.” Randy exhaled loudly. “There were piles of loans on the farm equipment, and then there was my mom’s medical bills. But Parker didn’t care. He kept coming back. Finally I told him I was bled dry. I just didn’t have anything to give him anymore. That’s when he said yes I did.” Randy sank into the chair and stared at Jo.

  “He wanted your farm, didn’t he?”

  Randy nodded, his eyes sunken.

  “I didn’t have much choice. Parker, he made it sound like he was offering me a good deal, like he was taking something off my hands that was going to go under anyway. He was paying for the farm, not taking it outright from me, so it was supposed to be great that I’d have money in hand to do whatever I wanted. Trouble was, all I really wanted to do was run the farm. But I signed the papers and took the check and left.”

  Jo didn’t ask how much Parker paid Randy. She was sure it was much below market price.

  Randy picked up the wine bottle and guzzled more of its contents. “I took off for Atlantic City. I had the crazy idea I could triple my money and maybe come home and buy the farm back and make a go of it.”

  “I guess that didn’t work, huh?”

  “Stupid idea.”

  “But you came back?”

  “Yeah, I came back, eventually,” Randy said, pain showing in his face. “I go to look at the old place and what do I see? Houses going up and roads going in and a big sign calling the whole thing ‘Holt Meadows.’ Holt Meadows! He didn’t even have the decency to keep the Truitt name on it.”

  “That must have been
tough to take.”

  “And suddenly Parker’s a big shot in town, married to the mayor’s niece, and moving into a big house of his own.”

  “And hiring you to do odd jobs for him,” Jo said, adding, “which you did,” she pointed out. “So what tipped you over the edge, Randy? What was the final straw?”

  Randy stared at the floor awhile, seeing what, Jo couldn’t imagine, then downed more wine, coming near the end of it. Jo waited, wanting to know, but wanting, mostly, to keep Randy talking. Talking, not thinking. She asked again. “What tipped the scales?”

  He continued to stare at the floor. “That day, I was working on the Schillings’ front lawn, cutting up a tree for them that had fallen halfway down. Their place is right next to Parker’s big house. I was there a coupla days, actually, cutting up the wood, stacking it up, hauling away the brush, and the whole time I’m seeing Parker coming and going in his flashy, expensive car. And I’m seeing the home improvement guys bringing in stuff to make his big, expensive house even better, seeing his wife go out in her fur coats and diamonds. And I’m thinking the whole time how Parker got his run on making all that money because of my farm. My farm.” Randy raised his eyes to Jo.