Southern Storm
Page 25
The moonlight was brighter than she would have liked, so she stayed close to the trees as she made her way between the houses.
The house on her left was lit up as if on display, and through the window she saw a mother working in the kitchen, her child at the computer in his room.
The house on the other side of the driveway lay dark, but as she stole past it, she thought she heard a door closing. Maybe someone had let his cat out.
Ann Clark’s house came into view, and she looked to see if the motorcycle was there. Not tonight. That was good, she thought. If Ann didn’t have company, it might be easier for Blair to get inside.
Her heart whammed against her chest wall as she made her way to one of the lighted windows. Slowly, carefully, she rose up to peer inside.
She saw the parlor where she and Joe had sat that day, breaking the news to her about her husband and listening to her lie through her teeth.
No one was there. The window from the room next door flickered, and she moved to it. The curtains were pulled shut, but there was a slit down the center that she was able to see through.
She caught her breath at the sight of Ann Clark sitting at that table, eating a meal and watching the television just beyond it.
Perfect, Blair thought. She could go in on the other side of the house, counting on the noise of the television to keep Ann from hearing. Surely she could find a window or door unlocked. If not, she was prepared to break the glass.
She ran around the house, to the farthest end from the parlor and dining room. The windows were all covered with screens, so she couldn’t check the locks without first removing one of the screens.
But she had to do it.
Her hands shook as she pulled her key chain out of her pocket and slid one key under the screen. She wedged it out, got her fingers underneath it and started to slide it out of its brace.
As soon as she had it pulled out enough, she tested the window. It wouldn’t budge.
She snapped the screen back into place, then tried the next one. This one was more stubborn and resisted as she tried to pull it out. It rattled as she worked it loose.
The light flew on, and Blair hit the ground.
Ann had heard her. She would call the police.
Blair headed for the trees near the driveway, made her way along the side of it, cut across the neighbor’s yard . . .
She heard a siren, and wondered if they could really be coming for her so quickly. She tried to make it to her car.
But it was too late. The headlights of the flashing squad car found her. The car skidded to a halt, and the door swung open. “Freeze!”
She turned and raised her hands, staring at the blaring lights. “Don’t shoot,” she said weakly.
“That’s her, Officer,” a man said from the shadows of the neighbor’s house. “I saw her sneaking around in my yard.”
One of the officers came toward her, threw her across the hood of her car. Her cheekbone slammed against the metal, and she stiffened as hands began to pat her down, looking for a weapon. “I can explain,” she said. “I’m a friend of Police Chief Matthew Cade’s. I had reason to believe—”
“You have the right to remain silent.” The officer’s sharp voice cut through her words.
“You’re arresting me?” One of the officers kept her face pressed to that hood, and she found it hard to talk. “I told you I could explain!”
But no one was interested in her explanation.
She felt handcuffs snapping on her wrists, and she tried to straighten. “I didn’t do anything!”
They pulled her up, and she looked at the man who’d accused her. He stood in the dark yard, wearing nothing but a pair of gym shorts and a T-shirt. It was the yard where she’d heard the door close. He must have seen her stealing down the driveway.
That meant that Ann hadn’t called the police. Maybe she hadn’t heard Blair’s attempt to break in. Maybe she didn’t know.
The officer walked her to the backseat of the squad car. “Please. Once you hear what I was doing, you’ll understand. If you’ll just listen to me.”
They shoved her in, then slammed the door shut. She sat back on the seat, hating herself for getting caught. By now, she might have gotten into the house, found Cade, and exposed Ann for what she was.
She looked through the window, saw the neighbors from the lit up house standing on their front lawn. Thankfully, Ann wasn’t among them. Maybe she didn’t know.
She leaned back on the seat as the car started to move, and wondered how in the world she was going to break this news to Morgan.
CHAPTER 60
The distant, faint sound of a siren startled Cade, and he sat up in bed. Had they figured out he was here? Were they raiding the place even now?
He tried to stand, the shattering pain in his head and leg shooting fireworks through his nerve endings. Dragging it, he pulled himself to the door. With all the strength left in him, he banged on it. “I’m in here! Please . . . can anybody hear me? Behind the bookshelves! Please . . .”
No one came. Sweat dripped in his eyes as he frantically looked around. If they were upstairs with her and weren’t looking for him . . .
He banged again. “Hello! Please . . . can anybody hear me? This is Matthew Cade! They have me locked in the basement. . . .”
They were coming! He heard urgent scraping, the door being unlocked. . . .
Ann Clark opened the door and leveled her gun on him. “What are you doing?”
Cade almost collapsed. “I heard something . . . the police . . .”
“That wasn’t here, you fool,” she said. “Get back on the bed.”
She waited with that gun as he lowered to the mattress.
“I think one of the neighbors must have had a break-in. Nice try, though. Too bad there was no one here to hear it.”
It was too cruel. He was sure they had come. “Mrs. Clark, please. My leg is shattered and badly infected, my head is killing me—”
“Your problems are no concern of mine.”
He wasn’t ready to give up. “You know they’re looking for me,” he said. “Somebody’s going to come looking. You’re not going to get away with this.”
“I already have,” she said. “You underestimate me.” She backed through the door and started to close it. “By the way, they are looking for you. You’re wanted for kidnapping. You and your new wife.”
She closed the door back, and he heard that scraping of the bookshelves again. Kidnapping? Wife? She must mean the letter he’d written. Had they really believed it? And the kidnapping . . . he was the one who’d been kidnapped. Had they pinned some kind of crime on him? Was that why they were holding him?
Disheartened and dejected, he fell back onto the bed, shivering and fighting the crushing pain. He was going to die here, he thought, and no one would be able to help him.
It seemed as if even God had forgotten him.
CHAPTER 61
The telephone rang near midnight. Morgan bolted upright in bed and lunged for it.
Jonathan caught her hand. “Tavist,” he said.
It rang again, and she grabbed her robe and dashed out into the hall.
Karen was already on the stairs. “I’ll get it!”
Morgan hurried down as Karen answered. “Hello?” She was breathless, hoarse. Her expression crashed, and she thrust it to Morgan. “It’s not them. It’s for you.”
Morgan took the phone. “It’s midnight. Who is it?”
Tears in her eyes, Karen started back up the stairs. “It’s your sister.”
Morgan frowned and put the phone to her ear. “Blair, do you know what time it is?”
“I’m in trouble.” Blair’s words were muffled, as if she didn’t want to be overheard. “Morgan, you’ve got to come.”
“What?” Morgan asked. “Blair, where are you?”
“I’ve been arrested, Morgan.”
“You’ve what?” She turned to Tavist. He was still taping, but he looked up at her and mouthed
“police station.”
“You’re in jail?” She yelled the word out, and Jonathan came hurrying down.
“Who’s in jail?”
“Blair!” she said. “What have you done? Tell me you didn’t break into that house.”
Blair grunted. “I got arrested for trespassing.”
Morgan brought her hand to her throat. She would kill her. She would just kill her. “I warned you, Blair. I told you this would happen! What has gotten into you?”
“Could we discuss this later?” Blair asked, her voice strained. “Right now, I could really use your help.”
Morgan realized she was trembling. “Blair, are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” she said. “Just a little frustrated.”
Morgan knew that frustration. “Which jail?”
“Precinct Three on Victory Drive.”
Morgan sighed. “I’ll hurry, Blair.”
Blair breathed a laugh. “Take your time. I’m not going anywhere.”
CHAPTER 62
Blair was in no mood to play games with these officers. They had treated her like a common criminal, ignoring her explanations and protests. She’d had enough.
“If you jerks would do your job,” she told the arresting officer, “then I wouldn’t have had to be out there doing what I was doing. I was trying to save Police Chief Cade of Cape Refuge.”
The cop shot her a look. “The one wanted for kidnapping?”
She sprang out of her chair. “He is not a kidnapper! He’s been set up, and he’s in trouble!”
“What do you have to do with Chief Cade?”
“I’m a good friend of his,” she said, throwing her chin up. “If you want to check on me, you can call Detective McCormick who’s running the Cape Refuge PD. Anybody there can vouch for me. I’m a decent citizen who’s worried about my friend.”
“That doesn’t give you the right to go prowling through people’s yards.”
“If you would do it, I wouldn’t have to. That’s what I’m trying to tell you!”
The cop laughed and shook his head, and went back to typing up his report.
Blair wanted to go for his throat. “You people are amazing! Unbelievable. You’re a police department. Don’t you care that a crime’s being committed?”
“Yes, I do,” the man said. “That’s why I’m about to lock you behind bars.”
She groaned. “Lock me up then, I don’t care. But go back there and search her house. I’m telling you, if you want to find him—whether you think he’s the kidnapper or not—you’ll find him in that house.”
“Ma’am, Ann Clark is not a suspect. And that case is in the hands of the FBI now.”
She realized she wasn’t getting anywhere with him, so she tried to calm down. “But you can still arrest people. You can search houses if you have reason to believe that someone’s life is in danger.” When the cop kept hunting and pecking at the typewriter, she leaned across the desk and grabbed his wrist. He glared at her.
“Look,” she said in a lower voice as she stared into his face. “I know that you don’t know Cade or what kind of man he is. But he doesn’t have it in him to kidnap a baby. He also doesn’t have it in him to run off and get married secretly. He left his car parked at the restaurant he ate at the morning of his disappearance. He hasn’t been home since.” Her voice broke, but she had him. He was listening, for what that was worth. “He’s a good, decent man with a heart. He wouldn’t make his friends suffer this way.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe you don’t know him as well as you thought you did. People get under stress and they snap.”
She slapped her hand on the desk. “He did not snap!”
“Blair.”
She turned to see Morgan and Jonathan. Jonathan looked as if he’d just rolled out of bed, and Morgan’s curly mane of brown hair had not been brushed. Smudged mascara underlined her eyes.
Blair got up and hugged her. From the way Morgan clung to her, one would think she faced thirty years. “Morgan, meet Officer Gray, who thinks that crimes being committed under the FBI’s jurisdiction are no longer of any concern at all to the police department.”
Morgan squeezed Blair’s arm to silence her. Blair hated that. “Uh, Officer, I’m Morgan Cleary, and this is my husband, Jonathan. Blair has been under a lot of stress, and sometimes she says things—”
The man shot a look at Blair. “Sit down, lady.”
Blair had made up her mind to keep standing, but Morgan pulled her down beside her. Since she had the checkbook, Blair acquiesced.
“He’s still there, Morgan,” she said. “In that house. To know he’s there and not be able to do anything—”
“What’s her bail?” Morgan cut in.
“None set yet,” he said, still typing. “She’s going to have to spend the night here and see if the judge sets bail in her arraignment tomorrow.”
“No way!” Blair sprang up again. “I am not spending the night here.”
He grinned. “Think again.”
Blair gaped up at Jonathan. “Do something!”
“What?” he asked. “You broke the law and got arrested, just like Morgan told you you would. What do you want us to do?”
“I want you to talk some sense into them. Get me out of here!”
Morgan started to cry. “Blair, you can’t throw yourself headlong into jeopardy, then expect me to fix everything for you. I’ll bail you out tomorrow. But short of breaking you out of jail, I don’t know what else to do.”
Blair wasn’t going to break down and blubber like some kind of frightened kid, in front of this cop and his buddies. “Okay, then let’s get this show on the road. You’re locking me up? Do it now. I’m ready for bed.”
Morgan’s face twisted, and she cupped her hand over her mouth. “Blair, don’t make it worse. Come on, please cooperate.”
“Hey, I’m cooperating,” she bit out. “I’ll fill out the forms for him if he wants me to. I’m not afraid of a jail cell.”
Officer Gray couldn’t stop grinning as he led her out of the squad room.
CHAPTER 63
By the time they got Blair processed and transferred to the Chatham County Correctional Facility several hours had passed and morning had begun to dawn. Enduring the indignities they put her through, she donned the orange jumpsuit they gave her and surrendered all her personal items.
She would miss her appointment with Jason Wheater this morning to sign all the papers making the newspaper hers. She wondered if the banker would change his mind when they learned she’d been arrested.
She followed a deputy onto the elevator, and they got off on the third floor. Her parents had often talked of the Bible studies they did in this very place, and some of the “graduates” had wound up as tenants at Hanover House. Morgan and Jonathan came twice a week now. She hoped their efforts had done some good and that she wouldn’t run into any angry inmates withdrawing from their drugs of choice, wanting to kill anyone who was handy.
They stopped at a room right outside the elevator and handed her a thin mattress, sheets, a blanket, and a bag of government-issued personal items. She stood there with the stack that almost covered her face. “I’m not going to be here long enough to need these.”
But the deputy had heard that before. He led her to Pod 312—a circular room with doors to eight cells around it.
She went into the pod with the small metal table in the center of it and considered the pay phone on the wall. She’d been told she could make collect calls, and she thought of calling Morgan or Joe McCormick or Jason Wheater . . . or a lawyer. Would any of them take her collect call from jail?
She shivered in the cold and wondered why they wasted taxpayers’ money refrigerating this place. She was glad she’d taken the blanket. Even if she wasn’t spending the night, she needed to keep warm.
A voice blared out over the intercom speaker. “Get up, girls. Five A.M. Out of bed!”
Her heart sank. She wasn’t ready to meet her cell mates.
“Who are you?” She turned and saw a woman with pink spiked hair peering in.
Blair refused to cower. Crossing her arms, she walked toward the girl. “I’m Blair Owens.” She thought of telling her that she was in here for killing a former cell mate who’d given her a hard time, but she wasn’t sure she could pull it off. “And you are?”
“Brandy,” the woman said.
Blair reached out to shake her hand, but the girl didn’t respond. Blair dropped her hand and went back to her bag. “Don’t get used to me, Brandy. I won’t be here long. Probably only a couple of hours.”
“Yeah, that’s what I said two weeks ago.” The girl was staring at her scars, so Blair turned away and started putting on her sheets.
“You been in a fire?”
Bristling, Blair looked back at her doorway. Even in a jail cell her disfigurement stood out. “Not lately.”
“Then what’s wrong with your face?”
Blair didn’t need to ask why she was here. Jail was the only safe place for a woman with such social skills. “My scars are none of your business.”
The woman enjoyed that. “Oh, you got an attitude, huh? You think you’re somebody?”
Blair went to her door and slammed it shut, right in the woman’s face. Fortunately, it locked from the inside.
The woman banged on her door, cursed at her, and Blair began to realize her reaction may have been ill-advised. When she did go out to use the bathroom or eat, the woman would likely ambush her. Watching the door, she sat down Indian-style on her bed and waited for the powers-that-be to come for her before she had to meet the rest of her neighbors.
As she sat there, she felt a surge of shame. If it had been Morgan in here, or her mother or father, they would have used the opportunity to minister to these women. They would have seen them as people with souls, needy, impoverished women who’d been dealt bad cards in life and needed a helping hand to get them back on track. Blair just saw them as a threat. The truth was, she feared them, but she wouldn’t admit it, not to anyone. She hated admitting it to herself.