Sick at heart, she turned for her clothes, just in time to see Maddie picking up her overalls.
"What are you doing?" she asked sharply, wondering why she hadn't heard the woman approach.
"Looking for your mama's journal."
Liz stepped forward to snatch the shorts from Maddie's hand, relieved when she felt hard, square edges. "For what purpose?"
"Ankouer. I want to read on ways to hold him back."
"You decided to rummage through my clothes without my permission because you want to hold back a phantom that doesn't exist?" Liz bent for her T-shirt, tired of Maddie's nonsense, but too weary to get angry. As she swept the shirt over her head, she added, "even if this ridiculous fable were true, it doesn't matter. We are leaving soon. Shouldn't you be helping Zach?"
When the shirt settled around her neck, she found herself the object of Maddie's stare. "Maybe we leave, girl, maybe we don't. But I wouldn't count on that man you love so much if I was you."
With that, she swished her colorful skirt around her legs and flounced off, leaving Liz with no one to question about the meaning of those words. Seconds later, she dismissed the remark as a product of Maddie's twisted mind. She had no intentions of counting on Zach. What woman on earth would trust a man who'd charged her father with killing her mother?
Chapter Eighteen
When Liz returned from washing up, neither Zach nor Maddie were there, and her father was leaning against the cliff, asleep.
She replaced the pan on the camp stove burner to reheat. While she waited for the steam to rise, her thoughts returned unbidden to Maddie's remark. For some reason it still bothered her. Why? She tried to put a finger on the cause of her uneasy belief that Maddie meant something different, something yet to come. The woman's furtive manner? The secretive look on her face?
In disgust, she turned away and gathered up a cloth and towel. Maddie was always furtive and secretive. How could that mean anything?
The water was hot, so she dropped the cloth inside the pan and walked over to sit beside her father. She nudged him gently and he opened his eyes.
"How're you feeling?"
"Tres Bien." Very good. He didn't look all that good. Tired and defeated, actually, and his skin had an alarming gray pallor.
"Do you want a tablet?" As soon as she asked, she remembered Zach still had the vial.
"My heart is fine. I am tired, just tired."
Yes, she thought, that's probably all it was.
She leaned forward to work a twig out of his tangled hair. He smiled wanly. "I need a bath, yes?" She pasted a return smile on her face. "This is a hard place to stay clean."
"Oui."
She tested the water, then wrung out the cloth and began washing one of his hands. Dirt filled the lines of his knuckles and stained his calloused fingertips.
Dirty hands.
In more ways than one?
"Why does Zach think you killed Mama and Jed?" she blurted out. It wasn't the way she'd wanted to ask, but there it was.
"I cannot answer, but if I can, would you believe?" He took the cloth from her hands. "I think, no, you would not. "Leaning over, he dipped his hands in the water, splashing the liquid up his arms and scrubbing away the soil. "You hear now, Izzy. Open your mind and hear. I have much to tell, and when I get done, maybe you will know why Zacharie think I am a killer of people I love."
Liz waited in dread.
"The fire stone come down a long line of women who are its guardian. It pass from mother to daughter like the torch, and it finally come to your grandmere. Each woman in her life does battle with Ankouer—"
"Ankouer doesn't exist," Liz said as gently as possible. "You're imagining him. Please try—"
"Let me finish, girl." He lifted his hand to stop her. Water trickled over his wrist and forearm, leaving streaks of clean skin that looked white against the gray dirt. "When I am done, you can say all you want about me imagining, but for now hear me out."
She'd get nothing else until she did, so Liz agreed.
"Ankouer seek the opal so he can be of flesh. But before he do, he must remove the last guardian from the book of man. You are the last one, Izzy, the one it is written can defeat him for all time. This is why he want to kill you."
Mild nausea churned in Liz's stomach as she listened to her father saying exactly what she'd hoped he wouldn't.
"And he got the opal. You got no hope to survive without it. So I come to Quadray Island and go in that sonuvabitching, stinking hole to get it for you." His dark eyes clouded with pain. "It is this way, you see. Every guardian got a defender. Your grandmere, she lost her man when she is young, and so Ankouer can get her easy. I was your maman's defender, me. But a defender's love, it gotta be pure." His voice thickened. "And, me, I got my mind clouded."
"Maddie," Liz said involuntarily, and with great bitterness.
"Ankouer, it were Ankouer. He make me not to see the right way, and so Ellie gotta fight him all alone. I seen them with my own eyes, but nothing I do will help her."
He scrubbed his hands and arms, hard, almost cruelly, and the water sloshed, forming a backdrop to his words. "Zacharie think I kill little Jed and that prisoner who got away. No, it were not me. Ankouer done that. But, God forgive me, I send them to him." He leaned forward and spoke with urgency. "You got to forgive him for making me under arrest. Let him do what a man, he must do. He is your defender. God bring you together to defeat Ankouer for all time. This place is for the final battle. If you and Zacharie lose, darkness will come over the world, and no one will be left to fight."
Oh, Papa. Losing her mother truly had taken his mind.
"Do not look at me with big sad eyes, girl. Looney, I am not. I been trying to make you believe what your heart knows all along. You been running from your duty. You can't run no more."
He pulled his hands abruptly from the pan, leaving the cloth in the pan, and Liz handed him the towel. He took a moment to blot the water away, finally giving her an opportunity to speak.
"I wish you would stop worrying about these things."
"Someone got to worry." He stroked her cheek, and she saw exhaustion in his face. The circles under his eyes were like dark stains, and he'd aged ten years in these few days. "When I done washing I think I will sleep, yes?"
"Good idea. You need your rest. We'll leave soon."
He shook his head. "I hafta see Ankouer again. He still got the fire stone."
"Papa, no! We have to leave!"
He looked at her for a long moment, then lifted the washcloth from the water and began washing his face.
"Papa?"
She wished she could see his dark eyes. They always revealed his true thoughts, and she suspected he knew it and had hidden his face to keep them from her.
Finally he lifted his head and let the cloth fall back into the water. Turning for the towel, he said, "Okay, Izzy. If that is what you want, we will do it. Now go get me my old tobacco box so's I can roll me a smoke before I rest."
"Your heart—"
"Izzy . . ." This was said in a warning tone, one she always obeyed.
He pointed at one of the crates stored with the many others by the base of the butte. Liz went to it, and easily found the box, which was tucked against the narrow end. As she picked it up she remembered the day she and Zach had worked out the design. Zach had executed the plan in wood shop, and later they had stained the wood, then waxed and polished it until it gleamed. It still gleamed, and she ran her fingers tenderly over the smooth surface, wondering how many other reminders of the past she'd encounter before she got home.
After she handed her father the box, she took the washcloth out of the water, then picked up the towel and took them both to a tree to hang out to dry. Then she got the pan, and left the alcove to dump the dirty water. Murky inside that pan, so murky she couldn't see the bottom. Somewhat like the events of the last few days. Like Papa's warning about how Liz had run away. Maddie had said something similar, and so had someone else. Someone sh
e respected. But who?
As she dumped the water, she again wondered why she wasn't able to cry. Tears were right there. In her chest, in her throat, behind her eyes, and yet they refused to flow. She wasn't sure how much longer she could bear the pain.
Perhaps it was for the best. If she gave into grief, she'd be unable to deal with the situation. Clearly, her father's mind had snapped, and he seemed almost unaware that Zach was preparing to take them back that afternoon. Had her father's insanity been there all along, just beneath the surface of his vital, laughing exterior? Had he really killed Jed and that prisoner?
Her mother and grandmother?
She turned away from the question, refusing to seek an answer. She only knew he thought his purpose was good and needed medical treatment, not prosecution.
Without warning, her mind wandered to Zach. Was Maddie keeping careful watch for alligators and snakes? Was the water quiet or would another of those unexpected vortexes try to swallow him up?
Her father had told her to forgive Zach for accusing him, and she supposed she might owe him that. If she'd taken this journey without him, she undoubtedly would have died along the way. But he'd had the evidence he'd whipped from his pocket even before they'd boated from the cabin. He'd made love to her, sworn his love for her, when all along he'd planned to take her father back for questioning.
Even if she wanted to try, she doubted her forgiveness stretched that far.
* * *
"Izzy is a little bitch, no?"
Zach jerked his head from the oar he'd been poking in the water and regarded Maddie with annoyance.
Things weren't going well at all for his plans to leave Quadray Island that afternoon. Somehow the boat had lost anchor, and though Maddie greeted the news quite calmly, it scared the hell out of him. They'd found it about half a mile down, bobbing in the sullied water a good swim out, which Maddie graciously let him make alone.
He'd paddled the boat back in, and she'd climbed right inside, perching on the middle bench and continuing her nonstop complaints about her mistreatment at Liz's hand. This last one just about snapped his fraying patience.
"She's angry because I think her father might have committed murder." He jumped as something brushed his bare leg. Swamp grass, just swamp grass. "Keep an eye out for danger, would you?"
The oar hit an object. He reached in the water, and came up with a gas can. "Here," he said, handing it up. "Store this."
"You don't hafta ask so grumpy." She stood up and carried the can to the bow, her slight weight barely caused the boat to rock. "You gonna hang around and get them all?"
"Might as well. We're not going to make it out today anyway." He peeled a strip of grass from his hip and idly tossed it away. It floated very slowly downstream, tugged by unseen currents. Just like the mental one flowing between him and Maddie, he thought. "I'm surprised you aren't furious with me, too. I thought Frank meant a lot to you, and I did accuse him of horrible crimes."
She shrugged. "What you want me to say? He done it."
Zach felt a physical shock. Painful. He'd made the charges, sure, but only for questioning, and the woman's admission made him a bit sick.
"You willing to say that in a court of law?"
Maddie laughed. "What? You think I'm tetched?"
"Then why tell me? They can force you to testify."
Her laughter faded, but a smile remained. "Not after Frank and me marry."
"I didn't know he asked you."
She looked down and flicked a leaf off her gauzy gown. "He will. Frank will pop that old question soon, real soon."
Because she had leverage, Zach concluded, and he questioned her truthfulness. But she did seem confident, which meant she knew something Frank wouldn't want let out. So much weird stuff was going on, and it just didn't come together in a nice, neat bundle. Frank's one-sided conversation in the cavern hinted at hallucination and delusion. But the sudden influx of money? That implied illegal activity.
What if someone else really had been in the cavern? A contact, who'd been hidden and refused to answer. Drugs would be the most likely guess, but for all of his suspicions, Zach couldn't see Frank trading drugs. Money laundering, maybe. Whatever it was, it fit with his original theory that Jed had stumbled onto a crime ring.
Were Frank's crazy assertions about Ankouer just a coverup for what Zach had suspected all along? If so, that meant the man wasn't insane. But why would he kill his wife and mother-in-law? And some twenty years apart at that.
Links, links all over the place, and none of them connected. He wished now that his eagerness to resolve Jed's death hadn't caused him to act so hastily.
His oar struck another can, and he pulled it dripping from the water, then waded to the bow of the boat. "I'm giving it up," he said, putting the can in the crate with the others.
He'd stayed in too long anyway. Fighting his jitters at sloshing through stagnant water and hunting for rectangles filled with gas without the benefit of boots to protect his feet had kept his mind off the jigsaw puzzle But not anymore. He had a question he should have asked long ago, one only Liz could answer. He was eager to ask it.
"Come on, Maddie," he said as he moved toward shore. "Let's drag the boat on land. I'm not taking a chance of it floating away again."
"A big man like you can't do it by himself?" she asked.
"Some help would be nice."
She kicked off her sandals, hiked up her skirt, and got in the water, pushing the stern as he heaved the bow onto dry land. After he dragged it safely to moor, he turned to put his clothes back on.
"Where's your pirogue, Maddie?" He pulled on his briefs and jeans, then slipped into his shirt. "I figure you want to tow it back."
"I leave it on the other side of the island. We can fetch it in the morning."
"Yeah," he replied, lighting a cigarette and preparing to leave. "That's where Liz and I left ours. Hope it hasn't met the same fate."
"It ain't," she said confidently.
As they headed back, each carrying a crate, it occurred to him she sounded as if she knew theirs had disappeared. He asked her about it.
"What other could it be? If you had a boat, you'd'a gone before I found you, no?"
Zach accepted the answer as reasonable. Who would stay on this hellhole if they didn't have to?
As they rounded the alcove, Frank's voice came to his ears.
"Money. All the time we argue about it, me and your maman, with her saying if it come so easy, why not take it?"
"You did what was right," Liz said. "But I'm sorry you had to. Sorry about everything."
Maddie swatted her arm. "Shoo gnat!"
Liz turned abruptly, brushed Zach with a scathing look, then lapsed into silence. Her eye followed him as he and Maddie carried in the crates of gasoline cans and placed them with the other supplies.
Money, Zach thought. They'd been talking about money. Where had Frank gotten it? And was it connected to the murders?
Well, he'd soon find out.
Liz got up then and went to the butane stove, stirring something that smelled like canned beef stew. Zach waited until she returned, then told her they'd be staying until the morning. With a blank expression, she replied she'd made that assumption.
The smell of bubbling stew set his stomach growling. His hunger and weariness went bone deep, but before he fell asleep that night, he'd get his answer from Liz if he had to browbeat it from her.
"I need to talk to you," he told her later, dishing up his dinner as he spoke.
"About what?"
"To clear up something regarding your father."
Her eyes held more chill than an arctic winter and he was afraid he'd freeze before her answer came. "All right. I have some things to clear up myself."
He handed her the serving spoon and she dabbed a small amount of stew on her plate as he grabbed a chunk of bread. "After dinner, help me clean up," she said. "We can talk then."
"A smart way to get someone to wash dishes," he remarke
d, hoping to thaw the air. Instead it turned down a few degrees, and she picked up some bread, then walked away.
You sure do have a way with women, Fortier, he thought as he trudged to his unforgiving seat on the boulder to eat another lonely meal. He'd barely finished his stew when he saw Liz get up and go for the wash pan. Shoving one last chunk of bread in his mouth and forsaking his usual after-dinner smoke and drink, he went to join her.
He helped her dump the paper plates and leftover food into a plastic bag, then started scrubbing the cooking pan while she tied it up. They were outside of the alcove, near a hole Frank had dug for garbage, and out of earshot. Their shared task gave an illusion of easy companionship Zach was loath to disturb, but he couldn't put it off forever.
"Where does your father get his money?"
"That's the important information you need?" She shook the trash to the bottom of the bag, then twisted the top edge.
"It's more important than you think."
"He earns it by running his tour business. You should already know that." After securing the bag with a tie, she set it down and moved closer to him, crouching to stare into the soapsuds he swished in the pan.
"You answer one for me, Zach." Her face and voice were as even as they'd been that morning she'd encountered the destruction in her mother's kitchen. Somewhere between the time he'd left for the gasoline and returned, she'd regained that cool self-possession. "The authorities concluded that Jed accidentally drowned. Why are you so convinced he was murdered, and that my father did it? Couldn't the prisoner have hit him while trying to escape, causing them both to drown?"
Zach shook his head. "While they were handcuffed to each other? Besides, there's no irrefutable proof they drowned."
"But you said it was labeled a drowning."
Zach scrubbed a sticky portion inside the pan a bit harder than it needed. He was supposed to be asking the questions, but somehow the tables had turned. "The coroner based his conclusion partly on water and debris found in their lungs. But"—this was hard to talk about—"those corpses were all chewed up, holes in the lungs, holes all over, even in the heart. Water and other particles could easily have seeped in afterwards."
Chills & Thrills Paranormal Boxed Set Page 18